


Beginnings

by Dark Witch the Injection Fairy Lily (The_INTJ_Sagittarius_Scorpio_Gryffindork)



Series: Daughters of the Flash Step [1]
Category: Bleach, Naruto
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 07:18:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 22,419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10826439
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_INTJ_Sagittarius_Scorpio_Gryffindork/pseuds/Dark%20Witch%20the%20Injection%20Fairy%20Lily
Summary: Yoruichi and Soi Fong are a Jounin and a Special Jounin, Kakashi's have a mid life crisis because he's eight again, the Shihouin clan council is pissed off because four alien Academy students have suddenly become the clan heiresses, and no one is paired with who they were in canon.  Amidst all this chaos, four girls slowly grow into becoming ninjas and learn more than a few things along the way.The weird brainchild Bleach-Naruto crossover kickass anime girl fic that nobody asked for.





	1. The Most Potential

“Yoruichi-sama, you must produce heirs. If you won’t choose anyone, an arranged marriage may be required,” Shihouin clan elder Hishiro rumbled in a raspy voice. He had pouchy cheeks, bags under his eyes, and an aged, pockmarked, and wrinkled face. He looked blearily through watery eyes around at everyone.

Yoruichi leaned back on her hands at the head of the kneeling clan council table, legs crossed lazily, deceptively calm. It was a long wooden table in an even longer tatami mat covered and shoji screen lined room, and clan council members knelt all along its length. “I’m not marrying anyone,” she said. “You know I’m not. I’d make for a horrible wife.”

Her retainer guard, Soi Fong, knelt in the corner behind Yoruichi. She looked over at her mistress worriedly.

“The Shihouin head must produce heirs!” Hishiro snapped.

“Why?” said Yoruichi, bored.

“You know why, Yoruichi-sama,” said Akadaichi, a black-haired young man new to the council, stiff and overly traditional and idealistic. He frowned. “The Shihouin clan abilities must be passed down to at least one person by the head of the clan.”

“So the real problem here is not me marrying. The real problem here is that I have to find at least one person to pass down my abilities to,” Yoruichi interpreted. She straightened suddenly, all business, and clapped. “Alright!” Everyone jumped. “Meeting adjourned. By the next council meeting, I will have an answer to this problem.”

She stood, and ghosted abruptly from the room, to countless stares. Shihouin Yoruichi had always been a little eccentric, but that kind of exit was unusual even for her.

Yoruichi padded down the wooden porch that wrapped in a perfect square around the center courtyard garden of the Shihouin clan compound. It was silent and peaceful, a little waterfall trickling into a pond, moss and lily flowers growing and curling around flat stepping stones. A willow tree arched in a corner over the garden on the west side.

Soi Fong hurried up behind Yoruichi, walking obediently two steps behind. “Yoruichi-sama, if I may ask… how are you going to find a husband or a child so quickly?”

“I’m not,” said Yoruichi, frowning ahead, troubled by thoughts known only to herself.

“But you said -”

“I know what I said. The council tells me I need someone to pass down the clan abilities to. Therefore, I am taking on student apprentices,” said Yoruichi smoothly.

Soi Fong nearly smiled. Clever Yoruichi always found the most baffling and infuriating solution. “Shall I compile a list of incoming Genin ranked ninja, then, Yoruichi-sama? Perhaps the top graded in their graduating class?”

“No. I want to start training them much younger than that. I need to replace their Academy teachers and give them private tutoring instead. And I need to vet the incoming students for myself and decide my own apprentices. That’s the only way this will work,” said Yoruichi simply.

“But Yoruichi-sama… how will Hokage-sama agree to such a thing?” Soi Fong asked tentatively, worried again.

“I know,” said Yoruichi, troubled. “That’s the problem.”

They swept on ahead, steps silent, through the Shihouin clan compound.

-

Two days later, Soi Fong was following Yoruichi again, into the Konoha Ninja Academy, a series of rounded white plaster buildings with flat red roofs decorated with the Fire Country symbol. They passed through the tree lined front courtyard and into the administrative building for the Academy itself, up the steps. They passed by hoards of students shouting this way and that, in their last days of the term.

“Ironic,” Yoruichi muttered. “In order to ask for students, we have to pass by swarms of students.”

They knocked and entered the Hokage’s office, which consisted of a vast, gold gilded mahogany desk. The Hokage sat behind it in a cushioned swivel chair, his back to the floor to ceiling windows behind him which showed off Konoha village’s view below. In the distance, Yoruichi and Soi Fong could see the wood and plaster buildings with fantastical, rounded, swirling, multi colored roofs. They could see the trees dotted amongst the landscape, the vast sandstone outdoor Hokage Monument, the forests of trees surrounding the village, and the circular wooden wall surrounding the forests and protecting Konoha village from invaders.

Most of the important buildings were downtown in the village center, including the Academy, the village council building, the Hokage’s quarters, and most of the clan compounds. So Yoruichi and Soi Fong had not had far to travel, flash stepping over Konoha rooftops to make it to the meeting on time.

“Ah, Yoruichi, Soi Fong,” said the Hokage, a tiny old monkey-faced man with neat silver goatee who smoked a long wood pipe. His traditional red and white robes engulfed him, his huge veiled head dress making his head seem tiny. He gave a serene smile.

Looks could be deceiving. Sarutobi Hiruzen was one of the most powerful ninja in the Elemental Countries, and it was he who they needed to convince.

“Hokage-sama.” Yoruichi stood at attention, Soi Fong behind her and slightly off to the Hokage’s left side. They had both made an effort to look nice today, showing off newly polished, gleaming hitai-ate ninja marker bands and wearing their forest green Konoha upper level ninja flak vests. 

Yoruichi had chocolate brown skin like all members of her clan, a ponytail of deep purple hair, golden eyes like a cat’s, and a lithe, muscular, curvy form emphasized by a tight black tank top and skintight black leggings. Soi Fong wore a similar outfit, but she was smaller and slimmer, she had brutally razor short black hair, two longer braids falling in traditional retainer clan white hairpieces on either side of her face. She had pale golden skin and narrow, almond-shaped black eyes.

“I understand you’re busy,” said Yoruichi. “What with the new alliance with Suna, the difficulties with the Uchiha clan, and that nasty de-aging jutsu Hatake Kakashi suffered on a recent mission.”

Soi Fong tried hard not to giggle. A smirk passed across Yoruichi’s face.

The Hokage sighed. “Yes, suddenly being eight years old again and starting the Academy is I think something of a trial for Jounin Kakashi. Being a student again would I think frighten anyone in the forces. His physical body is a child’s. He’ll have to go through school once more and stay there according to our relatively new post Third War age standards… it’s a mess. I have tried to convince him that having an actual childhood might be good for him. He does not seem convinced, and I may pass a law banning anyone from speaking of his past for his own sake.

“And we have just recently finally gotten diplomatically past that nasty Hyuuga clan incident with the Hidden Village of Kumo, involving poor Hyuuga Hizashi… Many matters weigh heavily on my mind… 

“But never mind that. I am never too busy to talk to my ninja. To what do I owe the pleasure?” the Hokage asked pleasantly, sitting back in his seat.

“Hokage-sama, I have a proposition for you,” said Yoruichi steadily. “I want to personally tutor certain incoming Academy students for the next term, taking them on as my apprentices. Soi Fong would be my teaching assistant, and they would also be her apprentices.”

The Hokage’s feathery grey eyebrows rose. “Well, if The Goddess of the Flash Step, a Jounin, and her assistant The Stinging Hornet, a Special Jounin, want to tutor some of my Academy students, I am certainly not going to say no,” he admitted. “Not only is Yoruichi a master of the Shihouin taijutsu Lightning Fist and the Flash Step, and Soi Fong a master of wakizashi one-handed sword fighting, but you’ve both mastered essentially every other ninja art besides. You approach the prowess of my own former students.”

“I always knew you liked me, Hokage-sama,” said Yoruichi, fluttering her eyes sarcastically, while Soi Fong smirked in satisfaction.

The Hokage could only sigh and shake his head. “Yes, yes. But students and ninja are allowed to train however they wish in their off time. Why bring this to me?”

Soi Fong internally steeled herself, though Yoruichi showed no outward sign of discomfiture. “I would like to privately tutor them in place of their Academy training, Hokage-sama,” she said.

The Hokage paused, and his expression became more veiled, brown eyes turning deadly. It was easy to see, then, his high-ranking ninja status. He took a deep puff on his wood pipe, clenched it between his teeth, and crossed his leathery fingers before himself. “You are a famous ninja from a powerful clan, Yoruichi, as is young Soi Fong. But I have to look with the best interests of Konoha in mind. Please show me how this would benefit Konoha,” he said softly, more serious and significantly less grandfatherly.

In other words: What do I get out of allowing this?

Yoruichi marshalled her planned arguments. “As you said, Hokage-sama, we are powerful kunoichi,” she said. “And I would like to tutor young kunoichi in training, which would be an excellent political bargaining chip for you should you allow it. It would benefit you, and it would benefit me, by getting the clan council off my back about heirs. That is not, however, my main argument.

“The benefits for Konoha are very simple. I would train several extraordinary kunoichi who I can virtually guarantee you would gain a high spot in the forces. It would cost very little for you but mean everything to the village and to those girls. You could even consider this a social experiment - weighing the merits of small apprentice group based training versus large Academy class based training.

“And you would have to pay for nothing. The training would happen on my own clan compound grounds and with my own equipment.”

They waited in pregnant silence.

“... I would need weekly reports,” said the Hokage at last, thoughtfully, as if considering his options. “And I would like to administer their regular standard Academy tests myself, to see how they are getting on. If they fail even one of my tests, they will have to go to the Academy and return to their normal course of studies. Of course, they must also learn the distinctly Konoha lessons of morality, togetherness, and mercy. The Will of Fire must be passed down. Are we clear on those terms?”

“Yes, Hokage-sama,” said Yoruichi firmly, still at attention, staring straight ahead of herself. 

“Then I think I can make a case to the Konoha council. Elder Koharu will back me up; she was one of the first kunoichi in the fighting forces. As will Inuzuka Tsume, who would deeply approve of an all kunoichi apprentice group in place of a cloistering husband,” said the Hokage in wry amusement. “Especially considering the nasty divorce with her own husband after her nine year old son Kiba was born a year earlier than planned.

“And as they are simply randomized young female students, no one would protest. You have always had an attachment to training young women, Yoruichi, as is emphasized by your gift with young Soi Fong.”

Soi Fong smiled and blushed, pleased.

“... Very well,” said the Hokage contemplatively at last. “I will make a decree allowing the tutoring in place of their Academy training. They will then take the Genin Exam alongside everyone else. How will you choose your students?” he asked.

“By vetting each incoming girl in turn, Hokage-sama,” said Yoruichi, smirking. “And taking only those I deem worthy. I was hoping to do all the testing in one day. The rest may of course enter the Academy.”

“I will send out a message to Konoha parents. I will tell them they should consider it an honor,” said the Hokage. “That should prevent you from stepping on any toes. Not that they’ll need much convincing - the two of you are legendary. To be taken on as a personal apprentice would be a great thing for any child, a kunoichi especially so.”

“Thank you, Hokage-sama,” said Yoruichi, relaxing in relief.

As she and Soi Fong walked back out of the Hokage’s office and down the administrative steps, Soi Fong said, “The clan council isn’t going to be happy, Yoruichi-sama.”

“I know.” Yoruichi grinned mischievously. “That’s the fun part. There’s not a damn thing they can do!”

Soi Fong sweatdropped as Yoruichi cackled with evil laughter.

-

“What?! You cannot teach outsiders our ways!”

Sure enough, everyone down the Shihouin clan council table was flabbergasted.

“I taught Soi Fong our ways. She’s from a different clan,” said Yoruichi with faux innocence, as if she genuinely didn’t see the problem. “All her older brothers knew our ways, too, before their deaths in the Third War.”

“That is different! Their clan are our retainers and guards! These children are outsiders!”

“They’re not outsiders. They are apprentices.” Yoruichi smirked. “And I fulfilled your request. They will be heirs, yes? Heirs of myself and Soi Fong both.”

“That is not what we intended!” Hishiro hissed, his face reddening.

“Calm down, Hishiro, you’re going to give yourself heart failure,” said Yoruichi, bored again. “Look, my overly chipper younger brother can produce Shihouin children; you don’t need me for it. It’s not like they’re foreigners. You wanted Konoha ninja to carry on the Shihouin name, and these girls will.”

There was an infuriated silence. “They had better be good, Yoruichi,” Hishiro warned at last.

This time, Soi Fong in the corner smirked alongside Yoruichi. “Oh, if I have my way,” said Yoruichi, “they will be.”

“You just want this so you can carry on flirting with men!” Hishiro snapped. He was the head of those who espoused the old ways.

“Hell yeah I do,” said Yoruichi, not remotely bothered. She stood, amused by the palpitant fury in the room. “Meeting adjourned. Come along, Soi Fong. This is the perfect excuse for a delectable feast tonight.”

Soi Fong followed Yoruichi from the room, exasperated but loyal and amused.

-

“I’m thinking four,” said Yoruichi to Soi Fong as they stood in the center of one of the fenced off ninja training fields, which consisted of a forest and a river surrounding a grassy clearing they were standing in. Three wood posts with targets stood in the center of the clearing. “One girl for each ability: one for ninjutsu, one for genjutsu, one for weapons, and one for taijutsu. Their individual clan abilities could factor into their specializations. They all have to have chakra presence, for eventual large and small cat summoning. And none of them can be stupid.” 

She stood with Soi Fong by the posts in the sunshine, hands on her hips. A pile of books and papers for a brief intelligence test - just some simple listening comprehension, basic memory, and summary writing testing - were set in the grass beside them.

“So you’re going to be encouraging their individual abilities as well?” said Soi Fong curiously.

“Of course. And their academic and physical shinobi abilities, and their seductive abilities,” said Yoruichi. “What kind of a teacher would I be if they weren’t well rounded people? I’m going to emphasize outside hobbies as important, too. And they can’t just be carbon copies of you and me as ninja. Flash Step, Lightning Fist, wakizashi sword fighting, and the cat summoning technique are important - but I want them to be individuals, too. They can’t just be four more versions of us. That would be boring.”

The line of young female students could be heard shrieking and laughing, the thrum of parental conversation joining the sound, just behind the fencing. It was a few months before signing up for the Academy, before classes were due to begin. Everyone seemed excited - the infamous Goddess of the Flash Step was testing to take on female apprentices, and her equally infamous assistant was accompanying her.

“What of beauty, for seduction?” asked Soi Fong.

“Eh. Beauty is relative. Anyone can be beautiful if they do it the right way, exercise and eat right, and have a lot of confidence in themselves,” said Yoruichi, shrugging. “Anyway, let’s let ‘em in. No time like the present.”

The girls would be let in one by one - “no parents allowed,” said Soi Fong flatly at the gate, pointedly ignoring several parental complaints. And there, they would be tested on their chakra moulding and chakra control abilities, their weapons throwing abilities, and their ability to survive in a very light taijutsu spar. 

They would also take the intelligence test. This consisted of Yoruichi reading to them from a book. They would take a ten minute break, then come back and summarize what they’d learned on a sheet of paper. They would then have to figure out a word puzzle down at the bottom of the test - they were tested not only on whether the puzzle was completed, but on how long it took them to figure the puzzle out based on a stopwatch. They had at least ten minutes to complete the small puzzle.

The first girl who impressed Yoruichi was a slim young girl with a heart-shaped face, chin length pink hair, and green eyes. She dressed plainly and carried her hair plainly, almost boyishly. She charged forward and stood in front of them, fists clenched. “Name?” said Yoruichi, raising an eyebrow.

“My name is Haruno Sakura,” said the girl fiercely, looking upward, as if determined to anger her way into the program, and Yoruichi crossed off her name on the clipboard sheet.

“Okay, Sakura. Let’s get started,” said Yoruichi, offering a friendly smile. Sakura gave a surprised smile back, so she _was_ friendly, but her watchful eyes were sharp. She struck Yoruichi as a hard, observant, cautious tomboy - taking in everything around her.

And so Sakura’s testing began, mostly with Soi Fong as Yoruichi stood back and watched. At first, Sakura didn’t look like she had much to offer. She was physically weak, her hand to hand skills were almost nonexistent, her chakra stamina and moulding was minimal (though she did have chakra presence), and her weaponry aim was alright but nothing special. However, her determination was firm, there was a silent fire in her eyes with whatever she did, and she impressed Yoruichi in two important ways.

First, she moulded her chakra with high levels of control into a perfect sphere - very first try. Yoruichi’s eyebrows rose, and then she became curious. “Hey,” she said, intervening in the test and picking up a leaf. She handed it to Sakura, whose perfect sphere of blue chakra around herself broke. Sakura took the leaf, surprised. “Coat this with your chakra. Try to bend it using that chakra in the flat palm of your hand.”

Sakura concentrated calmly, that same fire to do well in her eyes - and the leaf bent. 

Yoruichi took Soi Fong aside. Soi Fong’s eyes were wide. “That’s a Jounin level chakra control technique,” she whispered to Yoruichi.

Yoruichi smirked. “That chakra control should make her future Flash Step deadly too. Let’s test her intelligence. There’s only one other thing you have to be to succeed at genjutsu illusions - smart. After all, tricking the cerebral nervous system with control and sensory mirages requires precise imagination and pinpoint mental precision.”

So they gave Sakura the intelligence exam. They expected the paper part to take a long time. The puzzle had taken Soi Fong herself ten minutes the first time she’d done it.

Sakura’s pen raced across the page, her brow furrowed. She finished the puzzle in two.

“This is correct,” said Soi Fong, looking over the puzzle in something like amazement. Then she paused. “Yoruichi-sama, come over here.”

Yoruichi walked over and looked curiously. She paused in surprise - staring from the paper to the book. “That summary is regurgitated, word for word, from the text,” she realized.

“Um - have I done something wrong?” said Sakura frankly, puzzled. “You both keep whispering to each other.” Her eyes were genuinely confused. She was too young yet to see anything special in what she had done.

Yoruichi and Soi Fong looked at each other and smiled. They’d found their genjutsu user. “You haven’t done anything wrong, Sakura,” Yoruichi said. “Go back and stand with your parents.”

Sakura suddenly stood, fear but determination taking over her face. She bowed. “I know I have no clan skills!” she forced out, eyes squinted shut toward the ground. “But I promise I will work hard! Please consider taking me on as a student!”

Yoruichi looked down at her, reserved. “What would you do, then, to become a powerful ninja?”

Sakura paused in surprise, then looked up fiercely. “Anything,” she said, then amended with deadlier calm: “Anything that was right.”

“So you wouldn’t kill an innocent person if I asked you to?” Yoruichi asked.

“No!” Sakura snapped, tears filling her eyes. “That would be wrong!”

“I said return to your parents. Start being my student by listening to what I say,” said Yoruichi. When Sakura straightened, clearly upset, Yoruichi felt the need to admit, “Don’t worry. You are being considered. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

Sakura’s eyes widened, in genuine surprise at even being considered. And also perhaps in surprise at Yoruichi’s abrupt change of subject.

“Go.”

Sakura left the field, looking in confusion over her shoulder. 

“She has nothing to recommend her, except for utter brilliance and the best chakra control I’ve ever seen in a child - but that might be enough,” said Soi Fong thoughtfully. “She has the right mentality. She’s a fierce, quiet little tomboy from a poor family, determined to do well.”

“She uses her lack of family name as a motivator,” Yoruichi agreed. “It makes her defensive and cautious around her higher ups but useful. Yet she does not let it impede her moral judgment - nothing sways her into doing what is wrong to her. And she is surprisingly quiet for a tomboy, but with great passion. Quite a serious, cerebral girl. I think we could use that.”

Yoruichi wrote down the name: _Haruno Sakura._

The next person to impress them came onto the field a short time afterward.

She was a slim young girl with mid-length platinum blonde hair, one side tied back in a blue barrette that matched her eyes. She had pale skin and brilliant blue eyes with no pupils - a sign of some sort of eye or mind related bloodline ability. She was fashionable for a young ninja girl, wearing patterned shirt and capris, and her face was an oval shape.

“Name?” said Yoruichi.

“Yamanaka Ino!” said the girl confidently, smirking like she already owned the place, hand on her hip. “And I’m about to wow you!”

But plenty of subpar girls came in with high levels of confidence, so Yoruichi and Soi Fong weren’t convinced yet. “Let’s begin,” said Yoruichi, revealing nothing.

Ino’s scores in everything were good - not extraordinary, but solid and good, very good for a child in fact. Her taijutsu, weaponry, and chakra control were solid, and she was not as smart as Sakura but proved herself to be clever on the written test. She was somewhat smug and arrogant, which was not a plus for a ninja. So what made her stand out from the others?

This.

“Mould and control your chakra,” said Yoruichi. She paused in amazement. Ino’s circle was not as perfect as Sakura’s, but good. Its defining quality? It was humongous.

Yoruichi and Soi Fong shared a look. Good chakra control combined with high levels of chakra stamina was rare, and highly valued in the world of ninjutsu.

“Can I show you something else?” said Ino smugly, going for the gold. She made a hand seal and shouted, “Transformation Technique!”

What came out was an actual, good transformation into Yoruichi. Ino could do Academy level ninjutsu and she hadn’t even entered the Academy yet. Yoruichi realized then, just as well as Soi Fong, that with her other excellent scores they’d be stupid not to take her.

The real kicker? As she turned back into herself, Ino was smirking. She’d realized this as well, more canny to the ways of powerful ninja than Sakura.

“My family specializes in ninjutsu,” she said. “The Yamanaka are experts in techniques involving mind and body control. We control other humans like spiders weaving a web, people on our strings.” She grinned, fun and wicked.

In response, Yoruichi reached into a pocket and handed Ino a slip of paper. Ino took it eagerly, then frowned. “This is blank,” she said, stating the obvious.

“It’s not about what’s on it,” said Yoruichi. “That paper is made from chakra infested trees. Channel some chakra into it.”

Ino did so, and stared in surprise as the paper cut itself in half. 

“You are a Wind ninjutsu element user,” said Yoruichi. “With Fire, it would have turned to ashes. With Earth, it would have crumpled. With Water, it would have become wet. But you are Wind. Very rare in Konoha. Remember that. 

“And go stand with your family.” 

Yoruichi’s voice was stern, but she and Soi Fong were smiling as Ino left. 

“She has fun with life, I’ll give her that. And she’s aware that she’s good,” said Yoruichi, thoughtful and amused. “She looks at you like she already knows she has you.”

“She might be _too_ aware that she’s good, smug about it, and a bit immature… but we can work on that,” Soi Fong added in admittance. “And she _is_ talented. Instinctively clever in the ninja ways.”

Yoruichi wrote down: _Yamanaka Ino._ They had their ninjutsu expert.

The third girl to impress them was a slim young girl with a round, pale face and silvery, pupil-less eyes. Her blue-black hair was cut in a layered bob framing her face. She wore a reserved, classy sweater and pants set. Her demeanor was shy and hesitant, underconfident.

“Name?” said Yoruichi.

“H-Hyuuga Hinata,” the girl stammered out, wincing, as if aware of her own lack presence.

“The Hyuuga,” said Yoruichi in surprise. “They rival the Shihouin in terms of power. I expect to see good things.”

Oddly, this just seemed to make Hinata feel worse.

Hinata’s performance was strange. She had the potential to do well in everything, but she was flustered and under-confident and always messed up, not finishing what she started. The farther along the test went, and the worse she did, the worse her performance got. Her intelligence scores were good, and she had chakra presence, but she underperformed. The problem, Yoruichi realized, was not lack of ability - it was lack of confidence. Hinata was by all objective appearances in reality an intelligent and talented girl.

Hinata was flailing in her taijutsu spar against Soi Fong, who looked irritated and puzzled - not only because she was going extremely easy on Hinata already, but because Hinata between her clan reputation and herself obviously had the potential to do much better than she was doing.

Finally, Yoruichi said, “Stop!” and knelt down beside Hinata. “Why won’t you hit her?” She pointed at Soi Fong. “She’s a tough lady and you’re eight years old. She can take it.”

Hinata looked down, blushing, painfully shy and timid. “I - I just don’t want to hurt anyone,” she whispered at last in mortification.

Soi Fong made to snap at Hinata in disbelief, but Yoruichi raised a hand to stop her. She had the suspicious feeling that would do no good in this case.

“I’m sorry,” said Hinata, shoulders slumping. “I am not a talented ninja. Everyone says so. I do not meet clan expectations.”

“That’s not your problem,” said Yoruichi bluntly. Hinata stared up at her. “Well it isn’t. You _could_ do well.” Yoruichi shrugged. “But you don’t _think_ you’ll do well. That’s why you don’t.

“As for not hurting people… consider it this way. There are two situations. In the first situation, the other person is trying to kill you. In that case, hurting them or not hurting them, whether you are good or bad - those thoughts should not enter your mind. It is a matter of simply surviving, preferably by defeating the opponent though not always. 

“So that’s situation one. Here’s situation two. You are sparring with a friend. And in that case, you’re trying to save them. Still don’t get it?” Hinata looked confused. “Say you don’t try your hardest against a friend. That means they don’t improve. And that means when they go out into the field, they could be killed - _because_ they haven’t improved. All those family members you go easy on, thinking you’re helping them… that’s what you’re actually doing for them.”

Hinata’s eyes widened in realization.

“So if it helps,” said Yoruichi, standing, “fight like you’re trying to help Soi Fong survive out in the field. And for fuck’s sake, you were doing fine before you started hating on yourself. Fight like you mean it!”

She stepped back and said, “Again!”

“Yoruichi-sama, are you sure further testing needs to be done?” said Soi Fong dubiously. 

“Positive. I want to see something,” said Yoruichi, arms crossed, revealing little. 

Hinata went into the second taijutsu spar with this new mentality in mind - and it was like finding a diamond in the rough. A flame of fire, cool and dignified, filled her eyes, and she made a hand seal, activating her clan’s eye technique. “Byakugan!” The veins around her eyes bulged with chakra, the eyes gaining intense looking pupils. 

Yoruichi knew what that did. Everyone in Konoha knew what that did. The Byakugan when activated gave any Hyuuga user the ability to see through anything, for incredibly long distances, and almost three hundred sixty degrees entirely around them.

Hinata got into a Gentle Fist stance, her Byakugan seeing through Soi Fong’s body and into all the vulnerable points on its insides. She did not have chakra in her fingers, but during a real fight each of her individual touches could have been deadly.

Yoruichi smiled as Soi Fong looked uncertain, getting into a cautious, stoical stance as well. Hinata’s determination was new and fearsome.

“Begin!”

Hinata and Soi Fong went at it, and Yoruichi watched in awe as Soi Fong slowly had to up the level of her fighting technique - at least to handle that of a talented Genin, maybe even a young Chuunin. Hinata was not a perfect fighter, but she had incredible potential. She was supremely graceful and fast, spinning on the balls of her feet, excellent at soft but deadly touches and taps. Her all-seeing eyes never steered her wrong.

Taijutsu. Hinata would be a good Lightning Fist user as well.

“Very good, Hinata,” said Yoruichi, smiling slightly, as Hinata stood breathing hard and sweating at the end. Hinata looked up - and brightened. She looked a lot more cheerful and sweet when encouraged and confident. Still quiet and even shy, but not as depressed and downtrodden.

“Go back to your family.” Hinata left the training area.

“She has incredible potential, Yoruichi-sama,” Soi Fong admitted. “That was my hardest taijutsu spar yet. And she passed the intelligence and chakra presence tests with ease, even if she was super underconfident in all the others.”

“She’s a work in progress,” said Yoruichi. “If she can overcome her own underconfidence and timidity, she would make a fine shinobi. She certainly has the talent, tact, and intellect. She is soft and sweet, gentle and nurturing, quiet and kind, demure. Wise in many emotional ways. Those are not bad qualities. I like her.” And she wrote down: _Hyuuga Hinata._

But they still needed their weapons specialist. She came near the end.

She walked in wearing a Chinese silk shirt and pants, her chocolate brown hair in a double bun formation. She had warm brown eyes and her face, like Sakura’s, was a heart shape. She was a slim girl, and carried herself with notable confidence considering the nervous state the other enders had been in. She was not smug, like Ino, but she was cheerful, fiery, determined, and confident.

She came up to them and bowed. “I am Hanakiri Tenten!” she said loudly. “Please test me well!”

Soi Fong and Yoruichi’s eyebrows rose. “Wow, you’re so intense,” said Yoruichi in amusement. “It’s a good thing.” Tenten straightened. “Very well,” said Yoruichi. “Let the testing begin.”

Tenten smiled, open and excited.

Tenten was average in everything else, her chakra presence acceptable, doing poorly in chakra control but well on the intelligence test. What she really shone in - was weaponry.

“That’s amazing,” said Soi Fong softly, and Yoruichi had to agree, as they looked at the marred targets. Nick marks could be seen all over the outside boundaries of the targets, and then there were Tenten’s kunai and shuriken - stuck firmly into the target every time, from every angle, dead center. One fast shot, her eyes deadly focused, and she could have punctured somebody straight through the head, neck, or heart, and out the other side. She was strong, and she was precise.

“I can do moving targets too,” said Tenten determinedly, pointing at the hoist and pulley meant to slowly carry moving targets across the clearing. “Let me show you that.”

Yoruichi looked over at Soi Fong, raising a curious eyebrow. Soi Fong shrugged. Yoruichi went over and started the pulley, the moving targets dragging by rope across the clearing. Getting into a stance, Tenten fiercely threw kunai and shuriken at every single moving target. They all hit - dead center.

Soi Fong was smiling in a way that was almost a smirk. She liked this girl.

“My father owns a weapons shop,” said Tenten matter of factly. “I am also practicing with the pole, the chain, and the sword.” The pole and the chain? That would have taken enormous strength for a child, Yoruichi reflected.

In response, Soi Fong unsheathed her wakizashi. “Show me a kata,” she said.

Tenten took the wakizashi, and began a complex, wild dance with the sharp, silvery blade, a fire in her eyes. She was good by a Genin’s standards, which meant she was amazing by an eight year old’s. At the end, she returned the wakizashi and said stoutly, “I want to be amazing like the legendary kunoichi Tsunade! Please take me on as your student!”

“Go back to your parents,” was all Yoruichi said in response.

“I want her,” said Soi Fong immediately when Tenten had left, her eyes deadly.

“Agreed,” said Yoruichi, and she wrote the fourth name down. “She is from a good ninja family, confident in herself, friendly, and determined to do well. Quite loud about it, and that’s not always a bad thing.” _Hanakiri Tenten._

They gave two more tests to the final two students just to confirm, but by the end they had decided. All four girls had their flaws, but Tenten, Ino, Sakura, and Hinata held the most potential for them.

-

The students and parents were all gathered, whispering nervously, outside the training field by sunset at the end of the day. It had been a long, grueling, and nerve wracking wait in the hot sun for parents as well as students. 

“We have chosen four apprentices,” Yoruichi announced loudly, walking out to join their half circle of a crowd. “They are Hyuuga Hinata, Haruno Sakura, Hanakiri Tenten, and Yamanaka Ino. They will train with us instead of the Academy, going to my compound during the day and returning home in the evenings. Tests will be administered by Hokage-sama himself. If they fail even one test, they will test out of the program. This difficult program, should they pass it, will lead directly to Genin rank. Information from Hokage-sama will be forwarded to those families shortly. Thank you!”

Countless parents started shouting in indignation, little girls began crying. Yoruichi ghosted, reserved, away from the crowd. Soi Fong rolled her eyes at the drama and aggressively muscled her mistress through the crowds, snapping at people who got too close.

Soi Fong was a study between hot and cold, Yoruichi felt in amusement.

Nevertheless, she was watching the four families who had won as she left the training field. 

Ino cheered, leaping into her father’s arms. He lifted her up and gave her a great bear hug. She was obviously Daddy’s Little Girl. Her father Inoichi was a part of ANBU Black Ops torture and interrogation unit, so it was refreshing to see him so human, indulging and spoiling his talented daughter with pride. Ino’s mother, a retired homemaker who ran a flower shop, much more reserved and staid, had a small smile on her face as she watched.

Sakura slowly brightened in disbelieving amazement. “I did it,” she whispered, an awed little smile making her face glow. Yoruichi saw it then - Sakura had heart in addition to moral courage, which was perhaps equally as important as everything else. Both parents moved in to hug her at once, then they began bickering warmly and good naturedly about who was prouder of their daughter. Both were ninja, both lower ranked. Sakura’s father wore relaxed, lackadaisical clothes, her mother dressing extremely mannish and uptight. Sakura looked exasperated as she watched them argue, sweat-dropping. She had turned more into her normal fiery, good-natured, exasperated self. Yoruichi hoped to see more of that.

Hinata looked relieved, and then her dignified clan head father put a hand on her shoulder. She looked up at him hesitantly, the two of them surrounded by clan retainers, and he offered her a simple small, proud smile. Hinata brightened, delighted. The exchange was silent, but noticed. Yoruichi knew Hinata’s father Hiashi had been considering replacing Hinata as clan heiress lately, and she hoped this as well as Yoruichi’s advice to Hinata would help change his mind. Hinata’s little sister Hanabi clapped her, congratulatory, on the shoulder. Hinata’s mother had passed several years ago.

Tenten’s kunoichi mother cheered fiercely in victory, then began hovering over Tenten lecturing her worriedly on everything she thought Tenten needed to know. Tenten ignored her like an expert, jumping around excitedly with her little brother Abura. Tenten’s father, a retired ninja turned weapons dealer with a bad leg, watched the fiery goings-on with laughter.

Yoruichi looked away and smiled, leaving the training area through the hoards of angry parents. In spite of all the yelling, she felt she had chosen well.


	2. Pain of the Heart

_A ninja’s way is hard._

_This must be understood._

-

Every afternoon after his first year classes at the Konoha Ninja Academy, eight year old Uchiha Sasuke had to duck under yellow caution tape to re enter his clan compound. Officially, it was a crime scene. Unofficially, it was the only home he had left.

The compound was empty but for himself, and eerily silent, slowly falling into disrepair. Long twisting roads of ramshackle buildings, dim and unlighted, suffocatingly silent. He wished he could fix all of them, but he was only eight years old. Nevertheless, when he needed a break from his training and his homework, from cooking and cleaning for himself, he would start walking. Sasuke often took walks through Konoha, quiet and peaceful - Sasuke was a wanderer, a traveler at heart, and he knew it - but not these walks. These were for a purpose, of a sort. He would wander around the edges of the ruined compound, looking at the empty buildings and remembering, or perhaps imagining, the people who had once lived inside them.

Remembering, or perhaps imagining, their bloody end.

Sasuke had been named after the current Hokage’s father, one of the founding leaders of Konoha Hidden Village. The Uchiha were - or had been - one of the most prestigious clans in the village. Great things were expected of Sasuke. His older brother, Itachi, had proven to be the most advanced ninja genius their clan had given birth to in several generations, and Itachi had graduated young from the Academy just before the new age laws were set in place. Every pressure was put on him. When he was put in ANBU Black Ops, he was thirteen.

He was trained to be the perfect ninja, a merciless and seemingly loyal killer.

Sasuke spent his entire childhood, really his entire life, trying to meet that ideal. He got top grades in all of his first semester Academy classes, despite the age laws tethering him in place. He worshipped the ground Itachi walked on, asked to train with him countless times. But he was never quite as good as Itachi. Their father mostly ignored him.

Itachi had a more complicated relationship with Sasuke’s training, one Sasuke had given much thought to in retrospect. He hung out with his little brother and let his little brother watch him train - a truly awe inspiring performance even for the great Uchiha Sasuke - but he never actually helped his little brother train to become a better ninja. He would always poke him in the forehead when Sasuke asked. “Another time, Sasuke,” he would always say.

Itachi was busy. Sasuke understood that. It didn’t bother him.

On the flip side, Itachi also was a stand-in for their father. He went to all those performances and conferences their father never made it to, and sometimes, humiliatingly, he had to blackmail their father into spending time with and paying attention to Sasuke. When their strict, dignified father would be ready to attend some huge event of Itachi’s, Itachi always said he wouldn’t be there - he was going to an Academy recital or performance of Sasuke’s instead. 

And so he would force the whole family to come.

Sasuke never saw it coming. That was what bothered him most. He played it all back in his head countless times, looking for the first signs of trouble. He supposed Itachi became increasingly busy as the years passed. He supposed Itachi became colder and more distant. He supposed he had started seeing fighting tension between Itachi and other members of the Uchiha clan.

But the signs of mental strain? In true top shinobi format, they never outwardly appeared.

Maybe Sasuke should have seen it coming. Maybe, when Itachi was put under suspicion but never confirmed of murdering his best friend and cousin, maybe he should have seen it then. Maybe, when the clan started becoming suspicious of Itachi, maybe he should have seen it then. Maybe, when their father suddenly started spending time with Sasuke and talking badly of Itachi, maybe he should have seen it then.

A whole host of maybes. But just as so many people his own age worshipped Sasuke, Sasuke detested - was disgusted by - the idea that in retrospect he’d worshipped his brother. And so he was the only one who never saw it coming.

Ironically, he was also the only one who survived.

The night of the happening was a blur. Sasuke remembered coming home late from an afternoon at the Academy. He remembered the compound being empty and dark, strangely so. He remembered the streets littered with dead bodies, the smell of blood. The shock, the fear. Running and running, making it home, and finding Itachi standing over the dead corpses of their parents.

And even then - even then - he hadn’t seen it coming.

Sasuke asked Itachi for help, and comfort, assuming Itachi was similarly traumatized into stillness. Itachi turned around, and his eyes glowed red in the black night with the Uchiha clan eye technique, the Sharingan. He put Sasuke in a hypnotic trance, in a false genjutsu world, and Sasuke - who did not have the Sharingan, was too weak - could not break free. Itachi tortured Sasuke with endless visions of Itachi murdering their clan, of Itachi murdering his own parents in cold blood.

Sasuke became increasingly hysterical as he was forced to watch it over and over again. He was still eight. The entire time, Itachi remained emotionless.

When Sasuke was close to blacking out, the hypnotic trance stopped. And Itachi stood over his younger brother and told Sasuke frigidly that he was the only Uchiha that Itachi was leaving alive - not for any special reason, but because he was the weakest. Because he was simply… not worth killing.

Itachi had urged Sasuke to become stronger, and face him one day. He told Sasuke to live in an unsightly way, to survive by hating him, to become stronger and live for his hatred of his brother and for the eventual vengeance of his clan. He revealed he’d gotten the Mangekyo Sharingan, a higher-level Sharingan, by murdering his best friend, and had encouraged Sasuke to one day do the same in order to attain greater power.

“I wanted to test my limits,” was the only eerie, calm explanation Itachi gave for why he had murdered his best friend and butchered their entire clan. Like it was obvious. In the ultimate ninja move, Itachi had forsaken morality altogether, becoming obsessed with the all consuming goal of becoming the best. He had snapped under the perfectionistic pressure. He had killed his clan because he just… wanted to see if he could.

But Sasuke had a theory. Itachi had let him live, and given him thoughts of revenge, because a part of him was still sane - a part of him felt guilty for the murder of their clan. He had left Sasuke alive for one purpose, and it was to end his pathetic excuse for a life, and kill him.

Sasuke had blacked out. He’d woken up to the news that Itachi had escaped the village and become a missing nin. And now that was all he lived for: vengeance. Friendship and romance, he could not afford. Attachments would only weigh him down in his ultimate quest to reclaim his family’s honor. And above all else, there was the fear of the idea of the Mangekyo Sharingan that had been planted in his head. 

He registered distantly that with his handsome dark looks and cold, ruthless genius, he was attractive among his peers, but this meant nothing to him. People called him arrogant, seeing only talent, but Sasuke knew the truth - he had a long way to go. He had to best that impossible standard that had always been so far beyond him: Itachi. That man who was no longer his brother, but simply a person he was related to in blood.

The only thing Sasuke lived for was revenge.

-

Kakashi sat from a distance at Academy recess, watching the others interact. He was sitting on a fence post in the tree lined front courtyard, and the children - he still thought like an adult - were shouting and chasing each other around wildly before him in the sunshine.

The first year, eight year old Academy students around Kakashi were pathetic. It was hard to think of them any other way. Physically they were pathetic, yes, but not just in that way.

The child Hatake Kakashi saw everyone through an adult’s eyes. Yet his emotions, and his physical sensations, were those of a child’s, and the combination was supremely frustrating. He looked not only with exasperation, but with contempt, at his fellow first year Academy classmates, all the while supremely aware that in skill and rank he had become one of them. 

Uzumaki Naruto was loud, obnoxious, and attention seeking. Nara Shikamaru was lazy, unenthused, and misogynistic. Akimichi Chouji never stopped eating. Aburame Shino seemed to have permanently cut himself off from all human emotion, which could not be healthy. Uchiha Sasuke - who competed with Kakashi for top Academy grades, and wasn’t that pathetic - was more complex, supremely popular but spurning all human contact coldly and darkly, all affection whatsoever. Kakashi did not know the details of Sasuke’s event, the way he knew of Naruto’s. He had reverted back to childhood before the massacre had happened, and was infuriatingly out of the loop.

He supposed he may be emotionally reacting to the frustrations being a child once more conferred on him. He’d had a life, an adult Jounin life, with his own apartment. He still had the apartment, but the adult life was gone. He’d read quirky erotic novels and been late to everything and been laidback, joking, and easygoing. He supposed he could still be that way. But he no longer had the respect and status and strength being an adult Jounin had conferred on him, and he had been a Jounin for so long, grown so used to it, that everything good about him now seemed to have taken on a sarcastic and bitter edge.

He could still remember the mission when it all had happened. He’d been fighting another Jounin in Lightning Country, and the man’s hands had glowed with strange power, a power Kakashi and his team had not yet sussed out.

It was Kakashi’s fault. Only an idiot fought in close combat with someone whose abilities they knew nothing of.

Kakashi had been sparring, back and forth, and between his taijutsu and his ninjutsu he’d been winning. Then the man had slammed a glowing hand into his chest, his body had pulsed once, and he’d blacked out.

He’d woken up to find his teammates gathered around him, white-faced.

“Are they dead?” he asked, but his voice sounded… strange.

“Yeah, all of them,” his next in command confirmed. “And that poses a big problem for us. They were life force manipulators.”

Kakashi had glared at him. _“... What?”_ And then he’d been given a mirror. His single Sharingan eye was still there, that was something, leading him to start wearing an eyepatch alongside his cloth face mask. But all his other wounds, his previous older body… they were gone.

Foreign powers were told he’d died on a mission and left behind a son he’d named after himself. A decree was passed, forbidding any but Kakashi himself from speaking of his true identity.

Countless seal specialists, chakra theorists, and medic nin, sworn to secrecy, had been assigned to examine him in the following months. No one could do a thing. He was still growing, so he would be an adult again… eventually. Small compensation. His perceptions, his feelings both physical and mental, his abilities - they were all a seven year old child’s again. Kakashi had never been a child, even the first time he was one. He had no time or patience for a child’s things.

And as the clan who’d had the bloodline ability was dead, now no one could fix him. Chakra experimentalists began considering fusing the dead clan’s DNA with an orphan’s for future use, and Kakashi had stopped them right there. The very idea made him sick.

“I’m staying a child,” he said, realizing the weight of the words as he said them. Realizing he would become a laughingstock with his fellow - used to be fellow - shinobi. With his former peers. All of whom would probably now die before him.

Other adults who used to see him as an equal had tried to comfort him. Kakashi hadn’t let them, and that was when he’d realized he really _was_ a child again, which led the emotional spiral even deeper. “You can have a childhood now,” the Third Hokage had said. Whatever that was worth.

It was true that in his previous incarnation, Kakashi had not precisely led an easy life. 

Kakashi was raised by a single father, Hatake Sakumo, a famous ninja who Kakashi had much revered. When Kakashi was in the Academy, as a young child before the age rules, Sakumo went on a mission. He chose to save his teammates rather than complete the mission, and the deep shame he experienced in the aftermath of this decision led him to commit suicide.

Kakashi had promised himself that would never be him. He promised himself that he would always put the mission first. 

Kakashi shot to the top of his class and surpassed it. With no age laws, he was a Genin by five years old and a Chuunin by six. He was put on a ninja team with the future Fourth Hokage Namikaze Minato, with an Uchiha named Obito, and with a Nohara named Rin.

Obito was an emotional but weak boy, and he and Kakashi fought often. Kakashi was good at detecting mission objectives, but cold and distant and objective obsessed, not good with teamwork. 

Kakashi was made a Jounin, still a child. The Third War had begun, and he’d been fighting in it for a while - had already killed for the first time - when he was raised in rank in the field. Rin and Minato-sensei both gave Kakashi congratulatory presents, but Obito forgot to bring him anything.

They were given a new mission objective. They had to destroy a Kusa bridge in order to cut off Iwa’s supply line. Kakashi was put in charge, as Minato-sensei had been ordered away, for the first time as their team leader, to the front lines. 

The three of them encountered Iwa scouts on the way to the bridge, and the Iwa scouts managed to kidnap Rin. 

Obito wanted to save Rin and abandon the mission objective. Kakashi, dismissing this as mere sentiment because of Obito’s crush on Rin, insisted that he was going after the bridge instead. And so they separated. Kakashi went for the bridge, while Obito went back for Rin. But Obito’s words rang in his ears… Obito had told him, just before leaving, that Sakumo had been a hero. Not following the rules made one trash in the ninja world - but, Obito said, abandoning one’s friends made them worse than trash.

Kakashi was halfway to the bridge when he realized he’d made a horrible mistake.

“Fuck,” he remembered saying distinctly, and he ran back for Obito and Rin - getting there just in time. He and Obito had managed to free Rin, though Kakashi’s eye had been injured in the process. It was the first time the two of them had ever gotten along. 

In retaliation, the remaining spy had caused a landslide with an Earth ninjutsu. With his injured eye, Kakashi hadn’t seen a fallen rock coming. Obito had always been a weak Uchiha, but right then his Sharingan finally activated. He pushed Kakashi out of the way, and was crushed underneath the boulder instead.

As he lay dying, Obito gave Kakashi his gift. He asked Rin, a medic nin, to take out his Sharingan eye and transplant it into Kakashi’s head, to replace the eye he had lost. The Sharingan was supposed to be secret, but open and emotional Obito had never been very good with those sorts of things. He had only been wise in the ways that mattered.

Kakashi used Obito’s Sharingan eye to kill his remaining opponents. He’d faced a furore from the Uchiha clan back in Konoha, but Sasuke’s father Fugaku had honored Obito’s dying wish and allowed Kakashi to keep his eye.

Kakashi took on many of Obito’s quirks in the aftermath of Obito’s death - such as his laidback sense of humor and his perpetual tardiness. He combined Obito’s personality with his own quiet persona, until the two became one. He became quiet but quirky. Later, he began reading erotic fiction. He’d used his hitai-ate to slide down over his Sharingan eye, hiding it. He became Copycat Kakashi, a legendary ninja, because of that eye. Everything, everything he was, including his attachment to teamwork and camaraderie.

It could all be boiled down to Obito. And Obito had asked one thing of Kakashi: to protect Rin.

Rin was all Kakashi had left. But she was kidnapped once more, during a later mission, and made a jinchuriki by Kiri. Kakashi had found her, and tried to save her. Unable to handle the trauma of having a demon sealed inside her body, she’d leaped suicidally in front of an attack of Kakashi’s, and he’d accidentally killed her on the battlefield.

He didn’t remember much after that. He supposed he’d passed out. When he’d woken up, he’d been surrounded by Konoha ANBU ninja, none of whom could explain the utter slaughter of the Kiri ninja Kakashi had been fighting.

Spiralling into a deep depression, Kakashi had become a ruthless, cold, and emotionless ANBU agent, eventually being promoted to the rank of Captain. Nobody trusted him - not after Rin. Minato-sensei, now Hokage, tried to help him out of his funk, but he couldn’t. He even had Kakashi bodyguard Minato’s own wife, to little avail. The only thing that helped was visiting Rin’s and Obito’s graves.

Then Minato-sensei and his wife had died sealing the nine tailed demon fox inside their newborn son, Naruto, whose jinchuriki status and parentage were subsequently made secret by decree - again, Naruto was the only one who could tell others his age the truth. Kakashi and his fellows had been barred from fighting in the demon attack, the youth being held back to protect Konoha’s future. And now he had nothing.

He had joined Elder Danzo’s Root, an emotionless army of secret insurgents who believed robotic and hierarchical murder was the only way. Mostly to escape feeling anything. He hadn’t been able to stomach this, and had turned spy, instead fighting for the idealistic and aged Third Hokage. He gained much prowess within ANBU, eventually taking on in his own unit the young and talented Uchiha Itachi.

His life was finally getting back on track.

Then he was turned a child again, all his efforts became naught, and a few months later Kakashi’s prized protege murdered his entire clan and went rogue. Kakashi hadn’t suspected a thing. So where did he turn? Becoming cold, emotionless, and powerful was lost to him. He was stuck being a child in any case. And though he’d promised himself to protect his comrades because of his team’s death, now he was too young and immature to protect anyone.

What was the point of anything? So he hid behind jokes and laidback quips and strange books, behind sarcasm and bitterness.

He remembered reading the quote in a book once, something a bit more serious than erotic fiction, and he thought of it whenever he was feeling more melodramatic than usual:

_Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,  
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day  
To the last syllable of recorded time,  
And all our yesterdays have lighted fools  
The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!  
Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player  
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage  
And then is heard no more. It is a tale  
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,  
Signifying nothing._

-

Gaara, of Suna’s Kara clan - the reigning Kazekage clan - sat on a rooftop in Suna, overlooking the sunset desert. The sun gleamed red, gold, and orange across the sands, across the round-cornered adobe buildings and walls, across the surrounding stone mountains.

A sandstorm was supposed to come in two days, but for now the weather was calm. This was one of the few things Gaara enjoyed - the other being his forest of cactus plants. Gaara was a reserved person, intelligent but reserved, his solemn eyes rimmed black with the shukaku’s demonic chakra, his clothes rich, a white silk cloth attaching his sand gourd to his back. He bent a little with its weight. Gaara was ever poised, never arrogant, forever held back, the perfect Suna aristocrat.

It was not obvious to anyone what lay within.

People could be seen dotted between the buildings, wearing deeply colored clothes and sashes. Some were coming out of massive temples. A religious ceremony had just ended, and most of Suna was a deeply religious place. They had a serious, complex, strict, hierarchical code of honor, and their Kazekage were seen as minor gods. Gaara had spent his entire life kneeling and talking to his hated father from behind a screen in a grand, enclosed room. Unlike other Hidden Villages, Suna did not vote in their Kage - it was a heritage process.

 _Most_ of Suna was a deeply religious place. Gaara held no use for such things.

He could hear the adults talking. He may be eight years old, still going through private ninja training, but he understood things, even if most did not. The alliance with Konoha was tenuous at best. It would not last. Alliances with Gaara’s father did not, typically.

This only meant one thing to Gaara: that perhaps there would be a war. Perhaps there would be people to kill. He waited in hope.

Because of heavy cuts to Suna’s budget by the Wind Country Daimyo, Gaara’s father had wanted to see the one-tailed shukaku demon sealed inside one of his children. He wanted to bring Suna greater power by creating a living weapon. Gaara’s older siblings, Temari and Kankuro, had not been compatible with the demon, but Gaara was. It was sealed inside him before he was born, by Elder Chiyo, and when he was born prematurely his mother died from childbirth complications.

Gaara survived. This was the secret: Gaara always survived.

Gaara grew up in isolation, being spoiled and trained in ninja techniques, but mostly being raised by his mother’s brother, Yashamaru. The villagers were terrified of him. Adults treated him as delicately as possible. Children ran from him on sight. Even his own siblings were afraid of him. Gaara spent the first years of his life trying to convince everyone that he meant no harm, that he was not above them or unlike them, but he could manipulate sand thanks to the demon and every time he would reach out to pull someone back toward him, the sand would inadvertently injure them. His control was not good enough yet.

Gaara didn’t know what this meant to people at first. The sand around him automatically and without his conscious will blocked him from all physical inflicted damage. He did not know what pain was.

Yashamaru, who was always there to care for Gaara, always there to keep him from going too far, spent an entire hour one evening trying to explain to Gaara in exacting detail what pain was. This was mostly to stop Gaara from repeatedly trying to stab himself with the confusion of someone who did not know the potential ramifications of stabbing himself. He had wanted to see what other people felt when they bled, but Yashamaru said pain was a deeply uncomfortable thing. This made Gaara feel guilty. He had wanted to prove himself to people and instead he had made them uncomfortable.

Yet when Yashamaru explained pain, Gaara thought that sounded familiar. It sounded like what he felt in his chest, living alone, having everyone fear him.

Yashamaru explained the cure for pain. Physical pain could be cured with medicine, he said, but pain of the heart - that cold, heavy feeling in one’s chest that all who experienced aloneness felt - that kind of pain could only be cured with love. So Gaara took a jar of medicine, and went out that evening to the houses of all the people he had injured recently, trying to offer the medicine to them.

This made sense in his world. He would heal their pain, and then they would heal his. 

All he got were shouts and slammed doors. No one wanted to let Sabaku no Gaara, Gaara of the Desert Itself, into their house. Gaara eventually retreated to a rooftop by himself - a rooftop not unlike this one now.

Just then, one of Suna’s ANBU attacked. The ANBU was fatally wounded by Gaara’s automatic sand protection while Gaara, as usual, survived - remained unharmed. Gaara unmasked the ANBU, and found it to be Yashamaru.

Gaara asked in desperation why - why Yashamaru would do this.

And Yashamaru explained: The Suna Council had decided that Gaara was a failed experiment who caused more harm than good. Therefore, Gaara’s father had decided to have Gaara assassinated. _He was ordered to kill me,_ Gaara thought, clinging to the hope like a fool. _He didn’t want to do it._

But Yashamaru ruthlessly continued. He’d volunteered for this mission, he said. He had always hated Gaara for killing his own mother - Yashamaru’s sister Karura. Karura had never loved Gaara, Yashamaru said. She had hated the village for allowing her to die, and therefore she had put her vengeful spirit into Gaara’s demon’s sand, the sand that protected him from all harm. She had wished Gaara on the village for causing her death. That was why she had named him Gaara - after the phrase “a living carnage that loves only itself.”

“Please die,” were Yashamaru’s last words, and then he opened his flak vest and detonated the explosive tags, blowing himself up. Gaara had been standing right beside him. The sand protected him from all harm, so there was a great blast of air and fire and when Gaara could see again, he was surrounded by, covered in, blood and internal matter. The only person Gaara thought he had ever loved had blown himself up hoping to kill Gaara.

He had no one else. He had never had anyone else. No one else wanted to be near him - not even his own supposed family. Gaara was fundamentally unlovable.

He had promised in that moment to love only himself, and carved the symbol for “love” onto his forehead, in a straight vertical line above one of his brows, using his own sand, to remind himself. A constant reminder. He could never forget. He could never allow himself to feel.

By now, assassination attempts from his father had become normal. Gaara lived in his own set of rooms, alone. He checked every room he entered and all his food. Because of the influence of his demon, he never slept. He killed every assassin. He excelled at his private training in the ninja arts, because he lived for the only thing he had - the only thing every person had - death.

 _Why do I exist?_ he asked himself, and he answered himself: _I live to kill others. I am a weapon. That is the purpose for which I exist._

So he played his purpose to perfection, using his terrifying animated sand, using it to crush others into bloody pulp. He restrained himself to ninja spars and battles, and to people who got in his way and angered him. He usually held himself in check around his siblings, on a whim he did not understand. When he fought, when he killed people, when he massacred. He felt alive. The weight in his chest… didn’t matter as much. It was the only time he ever allowed himself to feel anything.

Gaara stood and leapt calmly off the rooftop to the ground. He was in a bad mood. Here, had two options: Option one, he could take it out on a training area and clear away everyone within a five mile radius.

Or, option two, perhaps someone would get in his way. Those were his good days.

-

Hyuuga Neji opened his eyes, unusually restless. He had been sitting, meditating - he found great peace and comfort in Buddhism, its solemnity and spiritual significance, just as he found significance in the traditional Hyuuga long dark ponytail of hair and loose, pale clothes - but today he was bothered. He looked from his private set of rooms across the Hyuuga clan compound and garden, its Zen-like beautiful neatness and its careful peace, the silent footsteps pattering on wood behind shoji screen doors around him. _Private_ set of rooms - Neji lived alone.

Neji had been born a member of the branch retainer family for the Hyuuga clan. Unlike with some other clans, such as the Shihouin, the Hyuuga were all one clan, and the retainers were related by blood to the people they were protecting. 

There had been twins, Hiashi and Hizashi, and a simple twist of birth had separated them forever. Hizashi was of the branch family as the youngest, and was barred from higher clan secrets; Hiashi was of the main family as the oldest, and as the heir, was privy to higher clan secrets.

From the beginning, it was fated to be so.

Neji was born Hyuuga Hizashi’s son. He, like all Hyuuga branch retainer members, was branded with a Caged Bird Seal at four years old. This seal on his forehead could be activated by any main family member at any time and cause untold devastation on the brain. Neji remembered Uncle Hiashi enacting it on his father many a time, when his father began to leak killing intent at Hinata-sama for having the nerve to be born a main family member and yet be weaker than Neji in the Hyuuga clan arts.

Neji did not blame Uncle Hiashi. He was very protective of his daughters, refusing to brand either of them with a seal, and strictly no killing intent was allowed around them.

Hinata-sama had been improving lately. It must always have been fated inside her, waiting to come out. Nothing happened without the hand of fate. She was still not as good as Neji, but no one was as good as Neji. Not that loud, braggadocious, annoying Inuzuka Kiba from nine year old Neji’s Konoha Ninja Academy class, not the ever-determined but flagging Rock Lee from the same group.

No one.

On the night of her third birthday, a Kumo ninja in Konoha to sign a peace treaty tried to break into the Hyuuga clan compound and kidnap main family heiress Hinata. Kumo wanted to study her eyes. Uncle Hiashi found the assailant and killed him. In recompense for their killed ninja, Kumo demanded Uncle Hiashi’s dead. They would have their Byakugan, one way or the other.

Hiashi’s twin’s head was sent instead. The head of Neji’s father. Neji had not seen this decision, not taken part in it of course. It was made mainly because The Caged Bird Seal sealed the Byakugan upon death. That bitter defeat had taken a long time for Kumo to get over. Neji’s mother had died when he was very young, so after that he was alone.

Neji was a product of fate, as anyone was, as his father had been. He was fated to be strong and yet a branch family member, subjected to the whims of others, eternally, his Hyuuga inter-marriage children - arranged so that the perfect bloodline would continue, as it was with most major clans - fated to do the same. His father had died for other people, he would die for other people, his children would die for other people, that was how fate worked.

He used to blame Hinata-sama for these failings, attacking her viciously during spars, that timid and pathetic girl with her lost mother and her great clan upbringing, but Hinata-sama had improved. Her flimsy childhood had grown over the recent months into an actual respectable future ninjahood. There was a new determination and steel in her eyes; moreover, she had been chosen by Yoruichi-sama herself. No, it was not Hinata-sama’s fault she had been kidnapped, nor was she a weak object for his spite. She was strong enough to be a main family heiress, if not spectacular as of yet.

Neji was lost. Without his hatred for Hinata, and with his fate forever to be trapped in this cage, what did he have? At least, he thought, if he had nothing else, he was the strongest. Part of his fate was to be caged, but another part of his fate was to be strong. Solemn and dignified Neji took this strength very seriously.

And so he retreated ever deeper inside his own spirituality - his own doomed surrender to what was in his mind foretold to be.

-

None of the four boys knew, as we often don’t. They didn’t know that happiness lay ahead. They didn’t know that four girls would save them, would brighten their worlds. They didn’t know that they would have joyful families.

Sasuke didn’t see Hinata in his future. Kakashi didn’t see Ino in his future. Gaara didn’t see Sakura in his future. And Neji didn’t see Tenten in his.

And yet - wouldn’t Neji approve? - that future remained.

Elsewhere in the world, four girls they had never met were taking their very first steps to greatness - and were taking their very first lessons with Soi Fong and with Shihouin Yoruichi in the Shihouin private compound.

And so as Sakura, Hinata, Tenten, and Ino grew in the following chapters, the boys remained - three inside the Academy, one in a foreign village - locked inside their pain, thinking themselves above and beyond help.

Waiting, without knowing it, to be saved.


	3. The Bet That Was Placed

Ino had breakfast with her parents on the nerve wracking morning before her first day of classes with Yoruichi-sama and Soifong-sama.

“They are both legendary ninja, and powerful kunoichi,” rumbled her father seriously, from where they were all kneeling around the low-set square kitchen table. “Yoruichi made a name for herself in the Third War, becoming The Goddess of the Flash Step thanks to her prowess with speed and the Lightning Fist. She was made head of the clan because of it. Rumor has it her power approaches that of a Sannin. She couldn’t keep a bodyguard retainer, but Yoruichi herself never died - a testament to her enormous skill.

“Soi Fong was made Yoruichi’s retainer after the war. She is the last of her siblings, the youngest and the only one left alive. Yoruichi wanted to avoid another retainer dying, so she made Soi Fong just as deadly as Yoruichi herself. Soi Fong is deathly loyal to Yoruichi, and a powerful kunoichi in her own right. They call her The Stinging Hornet, because of her fast in and out with a wakizashi small sword.

“Both are cat summoners and close combat specialists. They are great ninja and you must treat them with the utmost respect,” he summarized.

Ino nodded determinedly. She knew. Each of her fellow classmates was probably receiving this same lecture, and each of her fellow classmates had probably looked up Yoruichi and Soi Fong in the archives like she had. Soi Fong had countless collections and liked collecting things, especially dustables, and keeping them, never throwing anything away. Yoruichi openly on paperwork admitted to being a horrible tease and a terrible flirt, and she thrived from being around others all the time.

Ino wasn’t sure what that was supposed to tell her about her future Sensei, but she wanted to be thorough.

“Don’t worry, Dad.” She grinned and it was half a smirk. A light of confidence gleamed in her blue eyes and she gave off the teasing impression that she already knew she was the best. “I’ll impress them.”

“Don’t be so arrogant,” her stiff mother scolded - she and Ino did _not_ get along - but her father smiled warmly.

“I’m sure you will,” was all he said. “Just be careful, and work hard.”

Ino put on her winter clothes and ventured through the family flower shop that fronted her home, out into the snow toward Yoruichi-sama’s compound. She’d walked the route three times already. Ino was leaving nothing to chance.

She refused to test out.

-

Tenten got the same lecture on Yoruichi and Soi Fong’s greatness, had looked up the same information, but she spent the morning sighing in bored exasperation as she listened to her mother nag her constantly about countless things.

“When she tells you to run, never stop until she tells you, not even to take a breath! She is your superior, so the minute she tells you to do something, you do it! And -!”

“Relax. She’ll be fine,” said Tenten’s father warmly, putting a concerned hand on his wife’s shoulder.

Tenten’s mother’s lip trembled uncharacteristically for a moment. Tenten stared in surprise. “Oh, I’m just so proud of you!” Tenten’s mother wailed at last, throwing her arms around her.

Tenten knew then - her mother was scared.

“Don’t worry, Mom,” she smiled, feeling that familiar fire of determination flare within her. She hugged her mother back. “I’ll be okay.”

Tenten’s father merely ruffled her hair, and she took it cheerfully enough, nose wrinkling and brown eyes sparkling in amusement.

“You’ll be able to do all kinds of _amazing_ things!” Abura shouted, waving his arms big despite his tiny body, and Tenten and their parents laughed. Abura was a warm-hearted, energetic boy with a big appetite - still a toddler, really, young enough that he only saw how “cool” his sister’s apprenticeship was.

“I’ll have to show you when I get home,” said Tenten, putting a hand on Abura’s shoulder. “I’m off!”

Tossing her scarf haphazardly around her neck, she made her way through the weapons shop fronting her home, and out into the snow. Tenten had a general idea of where Yoruichi-sama’s compound was, and she wasn’t bothered.

She knew she could find her way. She excellent instincts and a great sense of direction. In fact, she was excited. Here she was, starting her apprenticeship to the great Shihouin Yoruichi! She was practically skipping as she hurried excitedly through the snow toward the compound.

-

Hinata had a formal breakfast around the long Hyuuga main family kneeling table that morning before her first class, in her father’s personal set of rooms. Retainers stood stiff and silent along the shoji screen walls, but only her father and her sister knelt at the long, cold table with her.

No lecture on Yoruichi and Soi Fong was necessary. Study of their paperwork had already been mandated by Hinata’s father, the lecture itself given several times over the past months.

“You should eat,” said Hinata’s father quietly, looking over as he saw her pushing around her food on her plate.

Hinata did not want to eat. She was sick with nerves. She’d been getting better at the ninja arts lately, her afternoon with Yoruichi giving her a brief flare of warm confidence. But what if she failed like she used to at the last minute when it really counted?

“Yoruichi has a gift with you,” said her father at last, and Hinata looked up in surprise. “I have seen it. Just one afternoon with her, and you have improved.

“Listen to her, and she will not fail you. Instead, she will bring out your talent. That is how it was before, yes?”

Hinata became thoughtful. That _was_ what had happened. Hinata had been failing, and instead of condemning her, Yoruichi had brought out her potential. Her nerves relaxed a little bit.

“Yoruichi is good at bringing out the strength in you. I have high hopes for this apprenticeship,” said Hinata’s father simply, returning to his meal.

A big, warm smile filled Hinata’s face, her insides inflating like a balloon. “Yes!” she said softly but insistently. “Me too!”

She could have sworn she saw a ghost of a smile pass across her father’s face.

When Hinata stood to leave, her sister Hanabi stopped her. “Hinata.” Hinata looked around. Hanabi smirked and raised a fist. “Kick serious ass.”

Hinata smiled. “Yes, Hanabi.” She walked away, listening as behind her in amusement their father began scolding Hanabi with thunderous cold, asking her where she’d learned that word. Bold and talented Hanabi did not seem remotely repentant.

Hinata left her magnificent clan compound, her inner nerves more jumpy and excited than before. She didn’t want to let her father down; more importantly, perhaps, she didn’t want to let down herself. Still, wasn’t it thrilling, having such a chance at greatness? She took out a map of downtown and followed it with her school bag to the Shihouin place. Quiet and methodical, she left nothing to chance.

-

Sakura’s home was full of argument that morning, but that was normal.

Sakura’s mother hovered over her, fixing and fiddling with all of her winter clothes. “Mom!” Sakura snapped, exasperated. “I’m eight years old, I can wrap a scarf around my neck!”

“Don’t you backtalk me!” her mother snapped in return, severe - much more severe and uptight and loud than Sakura herself, but they had all the wrong personality traits exactly the same, like temper, boyishness, and stubbornness. “It is a big thing you are going into, and -!”

“For fuck’s sake, just let her tie her own scarf,” said Sakura’s father from the Western style kitchen table, and Sakura’s mother whirled around. 

“I don’t see you helping, Mister Disinterested!” she snapped, and as she began ranting at him, he winked at Sakura over her shoulder. Sakura brightened, beaming. Dad had intervened for her so she’d make it on time.

Creeping out past her mother, who was busy shouting at her father, Sakura dismounted the townhouse steps of her home, out onto the street, running to keep warm and give herself courage and incentive. 

She paced through the snow. She’d already figured out where Yoruichi-sama lived. She had calculated exact geographical locations, made a mental map of downtown, and mentally crossed off all the places she’d known and all the places that were too small.

That only left one compound.

Sakura was determined as she walked toward Yoruichi-sama’s compound. For a girl from a low-level family like hers, this was the opportunity of a lifetime, and she refused to blow it. She’d poured through textbooks, through paperwork, through readings on their two Sensei that she bet not even her other classmates had found.

Sakura knew everything, and she was dressed to impress. Which meant she almost passed for a clan child.

-

The girls all met outside the gates leading through the tall compound walls. They eyed each other, cautious and reserved.

“Hanakiri Tenten,” said Tenten at last, deciding to be friendly. “Let’s all do well. As far as I know, there’s no need to compete, so we should support each other.”

“I can get behind that. Networking is important,” Ino admitted. Then she grinned. “As is having fun! Can someone say sleepovers?! My name’s Yamanaka Ino,” she added confidently.

Hinata and Sakura had relaxed at the seeming camaraderie.

“My name is Haruno Sakura,” said Sakura, looking around at everyone as if daring them to say something about her surname. “And Tenten’s right. We don’t have to be enemies. It would make more sense to be friends, right?” She gave a small smile.

“Hyuuga Hinata,” said Hinata at last, attempting confidence. “And I’m definitely in on the whole friend thing.”

“Oh, good,” said Tenten, eyes sparkling with mischief. “We wouldn’t want you to feel left out.” Ino and Sakura chuckled. Hinata smiled wide.

“So. Shall we enter the gates?” said Ino, with what seemed to an eight year old appropriate drama. They all soldiered inside together.

“Wow,” at least one of them whispered, pausing and looking around.

The Shihouin compound was magnificent. Long fields of snow and dotted black skeletal winter trees lined on either side a stone path leading up to a vast golden traditional arch-roofed archway. They trudged slowly through there in amazement, and found a series of square sets of wrap-around porches containing shoji screen rooms. Those rooms and porches surrounded lovely gardens. Each one led into the next.

“You! What are you doing here?!” They all whirled around. A thin, stooped old man with a pouchy face and a stiff demeanor was glaring at them.

They all shrunk, timid. “We’re, uh - the new students,” Sakura managed nervously, frowning cautiously, Hinata terrified into utter silence behind her.

The old man did not return the smile. “Ah.” His face wrinkled in distaste. “The _apprentices.”_

“Stick a fork in it, Hishiro.” They whirled around _again_ \- to find a feminine looking teenage boy who looked amazingly like photographs of Shihouin Yoruichi, same long ponytail and everything. He strolled up the wooden porch toward them lazily, his expression idle, hands in the pockets of his dark traditional pants.

“Yuushirou-sama.” Hishiro immediately became deferential. “I was merely -”

“My big sister is excited about these new students and I don’t want to see you picking on them.” Yuushirou waved Hishiro away in a distinctly effeminate gesture. “Shoo,” he said.

Giving the girls one last resentful glare, Hishiro stalked off.

“Who was _that?”_ said Ino indignantly, glaring after him.

“He was very rude,” Tenten said, puffing out her cheeks in anger.

“Sorry. That’s Hishiro. Some old fart on the clan council,” said Yuushirou without much interest. “He doesn’t like outsiders learning our ways, but as far as I’m concerned, he can stuff it. My name’s Yuushirou.” He grinned at them. “I’m Yoruichi’s little brother!

“Ooh!” he said excitedly before they could say anything. He had so much energy; they were a bit overwhelmed. “I bet you want to see my sister and Soifong-san, huh? Come on! They’re in the training room! Right this way!”

They struggled to keep up with him as he ran in easy strides to the second square and opened up a sliding door on the far east side, to their left. He stuck his head in. “Nee-sama, the students are here,” he said casually.

“Let them in!” Yoruichi’s voice called from an unseen beyond, and Yuushirou nodded them in. All the girls felt a spark of nervousness, even Ino and Tenten, and they entered on tenterhooks.

They were in a training room, wide and vast and covered in sparring matting. A side door, slid open, led into a second room lined with little traditional low-set school desks.

The girls all bowed and entered the mat, their shoes having been taken off at the entrance. Soi Fong and Yoruichi were standing in the middle, looking them over. Yoruichi looked idly curious. Soi Fong was reserved; they couldn’t tell what she thought. Even Yoruichi’s curiosity could have been a mask for something else.

“Well, little students, have we all introduced ourselves to each other?” she asked, seeing the way they were grouped tightly and defensively together, rather closer than usual.

“Yes, ma’am.” There were several nods.

“Good! I didn’t want to have to do any cheesy icebreakers anyway.” Yoruichi had clapped her hands suddenly and shouted; the girls jumped in alarm. “I’m Yoruichi, that’s Soi Fong, we’re really famous, blah blah blah, you’re the four Chosen Ones. That’s Sakura, that’s Ino, that’s Hinata, and that’s Tenten. Get it, got it, good?”

The girls nodded timidly, not sure what to think.

“Awesome! Then stop standing there all stiff, you’re freaking me out,” Yoruichi ordered casually.

“Yoruichi-sama,” said Soi Fong, sweat-dropping. “I’m not sure they know any other way to stand. I think they might be nervous.”

Each girl was relieved they hadn’t been the one that had to say it.

“What?! Don’t be nervous!” Yoruichi grinned. “This’ll be fun!” She bounced once on the balls of her feet. “Just treat me like any ol’ Sensei!

“But first, we all sit down, because there are a few things you oughta know. It’s time for me to introduce you to the class.”

They all sat down cross legged on the mat - on an equal footing, to the girls’ surprise, though they couldn’t help noticing Soi Fong sat slightly behind Yoruichi and Yoruichi took up the entire room with her charismatic presence.

“This will be an intense course,” said Yoruichi, becoming serious. “Very intense.

“You will learn the physical skills, which I’m sure you expected. These include stealth, trap making, taijutsu, ninjutsu, genjutsu breaking, and long distance throwing weapons. You will be put through survival training, taught how to break out of bindings, and taught ninja team formations, stances, honorifics, and maneuvers. Thorough daily exercise and eating properly will be necessary. You will also go through training counseling you through the psychological effects of torturing and killing, as well as potential rape in the field.

“You will learn academics. These include ninja history, ninja Hidden Village layout, codes and ciphers, geography of the Elemental Countries, map reading, face sketching, the ninja rules of etiquette, anatomy, and geometry as it relates to precise ninja physical calculations. You will do mathematics, read textbooks, write essays, label diagrams, and memorize information.

“You will learn the seductive techniques, as women. Most of the powerful people in the world are still men, so often kunoichi are sent on seductive missions. You will learn how to get a man to fall in love with you, lower his defenses, get information from him, lead him up to sex, and then kill him while he sleeps. These skills include flower arrangement, cooking, fashion, calligraphy, haiku, incense burning, tea ceremony, shamisen playing, singing, and Nihon Buyo dancing. You will also learn games, conversation, and flirtation; how to research and fit yourself to the culture and psychology of the man you are seducing; foreign relations and superb spy-level acting; and massage and relaxation techniques. You will learn how to secrete weapons on your person and how to manipulate information out of another human being.

“This is all standard Academy learning for girls; you expected this going in.” They all were nodding. “But you will learn more. I have further to teach you all.

“First, you will learn myself and Soi Fong’s techniques. You will learn wakizashi sword fighting techniques from Soi Fong, the Lightning Fist taijutsu of the Shihouin from myself, and the Flash Step. This requires you moving so quickly it seems you have merely teleported from one place to another. Spars between two people with the Flash Step are blindingly fast blurs. And _that_ in turn requires enormous chakra control in your limbs, intensive exercises for which I will be teaching you.

“You will eventually learn cat summoning. Right now all you can manage is a kitten or a cub, but hopefully by the time you’re sixteen you will be able to handle tigers, leopards, and lions. This, also, you will get from us.

“However, I also want you mastering your own skills. I will be giving you each private tutoring in different areas, based on my own admittedly extensive knowledge.

“Sakura will learn genjutsu. She will become the ultimate master of illusions and cerebral nervous system damage.”

Sakura looked determined.

“Ino will learn ninjutsu. She will learn mind and body control from her own Yamanaka clan, and also Wind elemental techniques from me.”

Ino lifted her head proudly, half smiling and half smirking.

“Hinata will master taijutsu. She will become the ultimate in both styles, the Lightning Fist and the Gentle Fist, and she will master her Byakugan and learn high level Hyuuga chakra emanation techniques. I have every faith in you that you can do this, Hinata.”

Hinata, who had for a moment looked afraid, suddenly became fierce and firm. She nodded once. Yoruichi resisted a smile.

“And Tenten will be our weapons master, learning and mastering every single piece of ninja equipment available. She will eventually get to the point where she can use sealing scrolls to unseal hoards of weapons at once, and weapons strategy will be emphasized.”

Tenten was beaming, thrilled.

“But it won’t be all seriousness. I’m including some fun, too!” said Yoruichi brightly. “I will pass on the Konoha code of ninja morality, known more commonly as The Will of Fire, after our beloved Fire Country. And I will be emphasizing outside hobbies as important so that you do not snap under the stress of being ninja - so individuality and making time for fun will become important too. 

“If at the end of four years you’re still here and I feel like you’ve passed muster - I’ll buy you your very own first kunoichi outfit and haircut.

“But first, we will do this for four solid years. No getting ahead, no falling behind. You will then take the Genin rank exam.

“So that’s the layout of my system. But there is more I need to tell you. I decided to take on apprentices so that I could avoid having to marry and make biological heirs. This means you, essentially, are my heirs.”

There was an amazed silence.

Yoruichi smiled. “I really need you not to let me down,” she admitted. “Because a large part of the Shihouin clan council doesn’t like this idea, and if you fuck this up I’m going to lose a lot of political clout. I’m placing a bet on you four. You may not be aware of it, but you had something the others didn’t.”

The girls were remembering Hishiro from before.

“But there’s something at stake for you, too,” continued Yoruichi. “I will include practical mission-like exams and recitals for your families and my own in the current curriculum, but the Hokage will give you every standardized Academy test himself. If you fail even one of his tests, academic or physical, you will lose your chance at this enormous strength opportunity and you will have to return to the less ability driven Academy.”

The girls sat in intimidated silence.

“So,” said Yoruichi almost playfully, “can I count on you?”

Determination filled them. They couldn’t let themselves down, but more importantly, they couldn’t let Yoruichi-sama down. She had seen something in them they didn’t know they had. She was betting on them.

“I’m going to be your sparring partner, lecturer, and second in command, and I demand high levels of respect!” Soi Fong snapped suddenly, making them all jump. “I want a yes, ma’am!”

“YES, MA’AM!” they all shouted as one.

Yoruichi smiled and stood. “Good,” she said. “Then let’s take the rest of the day to assess your current skill levels. This is not a test - I just want to see where you are.”

They started with the physical. Soi Fong barked at the girls as they ran with terror, doing slow laps around the mat. They gasped their feeble way through pushups and situps. Their taijutsu spars with Soi Fong or even each other and their chakra abilities were pathetic, their aim from far distances was way off, they never noticed the genjutsu Yoruichi subtly placed over them periodically, and when they were told to hide or walk silently they just stood there confused in the middle of the empty room. It was funny, but exasperating.

Their academic and seductive abilities weren’t much better. Their academic testing information was minimal, their handwriting and technical writing abilities were sloppy, and their math was, well, essentially second grade. They didn’t know a damn thing about a single kunoichi art, and when they were told to act seductive they again stood still confused.

They did all do well in different areas. Ino was good at chakra moulding, Sakura at academics and chakra control and she got a funny look on her face when she noticed certain genjutsu, Hinata at taijutsu, and Tenten was pretty good at aiming even from a far distance. Hinata and Ino knew something about tea ceremony and flower arrangement, though from a viewer’s perspective, and Ino played at making a pose when told to act seductive. But in the things they were good in, just as well as the rest, it was plainly obvious now that they were only children.

Oh, and their professionalism and seriousness could use a little bit of work. They wailed, complained, and shouted back at Soi Fong a lot, even Sakura with her passionate temper, and Yoruichi knew that had to stop. They were not technically children any longer.

“Alright,” said Yoruichi, sweat-dropping, looking over the feeble round of innocent and pathetic young girls. “This is going to take a lot of work.

“Let’s get started.”


	4. New Girls

And so their training began.

They began getting a general sense of how their lessons would be structured during their first week. First, Soi Fong demanded extraordinarily high levels of professionalism, an order they suspected came from Yoruichi herself, who always simply stood back with her arms folded as Soi Fong yelled over them.

“If you feel like whining, why don’t you go to the Academy?! They’ll treat you like a pansy, but not me! I expect my orders to be followed, and I expect them to be followed without complaint! I want bowing before and after each training session, professional levels of seriousness, and lots of yes, ma’ams!”

“But Sensei -!” Sakura began heatedly, Ino also opening her mouth to argue.

“AND IT’S SAMA!” Soi Fong screamed. “SOIFONG-SAMA AND YORUICHI-SAMA!”

They quickly learned the magic words: “Yes, ma’am.” They had learned even by the end of their first week that extraordinary professionalism was required of a ninja and whining got them nowhere.

They always started the day with physical exercise: jogs, pushups and situps, sometimes even rock climbing up a false wall or swimming at the compound’s marble indoor pool. Soi Fong would yell over them the entire time, constantly commanding them through their breathless exhaustion to go faster.

But they were not just given exercise - they were also taught proper eating techniques so they wouldn’t pass out. Yoruichi would give them over the following years extensive medical lessons on food health and eating before and after exercise. They always got breaks to do this, in order to get them into the habit.

Of course, there were the physical lessons. Stealth and trap-making went hand in hand. “You will learn how to hide in any environment, how to hide any ninja equipment trap, and how to walk completely silently,” Yoruichi mandated. “You will also learn high levels of trap-making strategy.” This usually included trying to trick each other in the deep, forested depths of pre-booked training fields.

They also started learning how to use ninja equipment, such as explosive tags and ninja wire, they learned how to detect poisons, and they learned how to throw long distance weapons (kunai, shuriken, senbon needles) perfectly, starting with close unmoving targets. Eventually they would move up to a level where they could throw perfectly at someone who was running a long distance away. They learned different types of aim: which would kill someone, which would make them seem dead using pressure points, which would injure them.

Taijutsu, ninjutsu, and genjutsu were their main areas of study, however. They had to at least survive in a basic Academy hand to hand spar, they had to learn three ninjutsu (the Replacement with another object, the afterimage Clone, and the physical Transformation), and they didn’t have to be able to craft a genjutsu but they did have to know how to break out of one.

“There is always a flaw in the illusion that tells the truth, because no one’s imagination is perfect,” said Yoruichi. “Noticing that flaw is step one. Disrupting your own chakra flow to break free of the illusion is step two.”

In tandem with chakra related techniques, they also studied the mechanics of chakra and practiced doing perfect hand signs at extraordinarily fast speeds.

They were taught how to break out of bindings, mostly by being tied up and then given the techniques to figure it out without hurting their wrists, and they were put through tracking and survival training. The tracking and survival training consisted of two steps: first they would learn a certain level of tracking and survival techniques, and then they would have to go out and practice them in the wilderness alongside their Sensei, who would create mini missions for them.

They also memorized countless ninja stances and honorifics, and countless team level formations, rules, and maneuvers. Ninja were basically soldiers out for hire. During times of peace, when they weren’t fighting in wars for their country, they took on any mission that was paid for and handed to them - the higher the rank, the higher level the missions - and they often fought in teams. Yoruichi would give them individual and team strategy exercises, to up the ante.

Their psychological study began as they were counseled in how to handle issues such as rape, torture, and murder out in the field. This was the darkest part of their studies, but Yoruichi mandated they learn it from a young age. At the same time, they were taught to be good, respectful people on the fields themselves - defending all comrades, for example, or only killing when they were absolutely forced to. This Konoha code, unusual for hired mercenaries or even soldiers, was known as the Will of Fire.

So there was a strange dichotomy to what they were learning. They were taught rules of basic civility and morality, yet they were also taught how to psychologically deal with the fact that they _would_ have to murder. They were even given Shadow Clones to practice vicious and merciless assaults on.

These were mostly mat-based lessons. But there were also academic lessons, knelt in the small attached classroom. Ninja history and ninja Hidden Village layout went hand in hand - they would learn both the history and the layout of different countries’ Hidden Villages full of ninja, with a special emphasis placed on Konoha, and they memorized the seemingly countless inter-Village rules even with allies. They studied names and dates, events and wars, battles and alliances and enemies. They wrote essays analyzing different aspects of ninja history, and poured through many books - some of them interesting, others not so much.

Codes and ciphers, map reading and making, face sketching, and memorizing the rules of ninja etiquette were the most obviously useful lessons. But they also memorized and labeled anatomy and Elemental geography maps, and studied mathematical and geometric calculations that were supposedly useful in judging things like kunai throwing distances (though even Sakura had her doubts).

They memorized the different styles of flower arrangement, and practiced being creative as well as rule-based with these plants for themselves. They learned how to cook countless meals, and studied professional level fashion as well as cosmetic theory and technique from a young age, learning to differentiate between colors, textures, styles, complexions, and body and face shapes. Calligraphy and haiku went hand in hand, as did hosting incense burning ceremonies and tea ceremonies. In music, they learned the shamisen, proper singing technique, and formal Nihon Buyo acting-dance.

On a more intellectual level, they practiced games, conversation, and flirtation on their Sensei. Their Sensei would pretend to be different people, thus forcing the girls to study cultural and psychological profiles and prepare and tailor their act according to their imaginary subject. One of their Sensei would act out being the subject, and they in turn would act out being the perfect woman for that man, trying to suss out information without supposedly raising suspicions. They studied foreign relations, learned how to secrete weapons in jewelry or hair ornaments or inside sashes, learned how to get a man drunk without getting drunk themselves, and learned massage and whisper relaxation techniques using soothing oils - with a playful buildup inevitably toward sex.

Once they had gotten that far, they of course learned quick and silent murder techniques using easily secreted objects such as senbon needles, or using suffocation and strangling. Training in safe sex practices was also a must.

Soi Fong and Yoruichi had individual sessions with the group. Soi Fong bought them each a wakizashi sword and sheath, to be strapped to the thigh opposite their weapons and equipment pouch, and she put them through high level small one-handed swordsmanship training. Yoruichi taught them Lightning Fist right alongside Academy taijutsu, only with Lightning Fist she expected more and a much higher level of expertise. There were two steps to learning the Flash Step: first they mastered chakra control on a formidable level, and second they learned how to channel it into their legs and arms to enhance speed. Yoruichi wanted them to eventually perfect their chakra control to the level where they were as fast as her or Soi Fong - who their eyes could not track once close distance fighting had begun.

They were allowed to watch Yoruichi and Soi Fong fight using hand to hand and knife techniques. They were mere blurs of speed, strength, and execution. It was a sight to behold. “Wow…” the girls would whisper, eyes wide, staring in awe from where they sat off to the side. What was really incredible was that they knew - this was only a small glimpse into Yoruichi’s and Soi Fong’s full abilities. That was really when they became “Yoruichi-sama” and “Soifong-sama” to the girls. The idea of being like that was incentive enough for them to try hard at Yoruichi’s and Soi Fong’s skills.

Both of their teachers emphasized speed as the ultimate master over any attack. This was especially the case with Lightning Fist. “They can’t attack you if they can’t catch you,” was Yoruichi’s ultimate motto.

They each signed the cat summoning contract, knicking their fingers and swiping their blood across the scroll. Then they tried the summoning technique - and even summoning a kitten or a cub was exhausting. “Ah, so you can summon something,” said Yoruichi pleasantly, seemingly oblivious to their sudden fatigue as kittens and cubs appeared before them. “Excellent.”

They would continue practicing the technique over the following years. The boss summon had been told of them, supposedly, but right now they only knew the names of the friendly and playful cubs and kittens. They kept their end goal in mind: the idea of being able to ride a tiger, lion, or leopard into the battlefield someday was _awesome._

Then of course they each trained individually with Yoruichi in their own personal abilities.

Sakura over the years was to master controlling the cerebral nervous system, inflicting direct damage to it, and sending it sensory mirages otherwise known as illusions. She must, of course, become an expert in breaking out of illusions herself. This required enormous imagination and strategy, perfect chakra control, and a fine eye for detail. Sakura learned how to make enemies kill themselves or each other, how to cause extensive brain damage, and how to quickly attack an enemy while directing their attention to a false sensory experience elsewhere. Quick kill attacks were emphasized. Her genjutsu became increasingly complex and difficult to sense, and of increasing scope and layers of complexity, as the years passed. She studied lots of psychology for this training, psychology in what frightened and disturbed people the most. “You have a lot to prove, Sakura,” said Yoruichi. “But I trust you can do it.”

Ino over the years was to master all manner of Wind elemental techniques, both blowing and cutting. She would progress into increasingly stronger, more complex, and larger Wind ninjutsu as time passed. Yoruichi also encouraged her study in mind and body control and manipulation techniques, pushing her toward ever greater heights in that arena. “I want you to be as good as your father,” Yoruichi said. “He can read minds through a person’s eyes, sense minds, create telepathic communication links, as well as control both the mind and the body in hostage or battle situations. I want that to be you.” Ino became awed, and then determined. She had the willpower to get there, she had the chakra strength and ability, and she had the teacher.

Hinata put special attention on Lightning Fist, and she was also pushed to ever greater heights in Gentle Fist. Her Byakugan had to be spot on and she should eventually learn chakra emanation techniques such as the cutting One Body Blow or the Kaiten dome shield. Under Yoruichi, who was warm, fiery, determined, and encouraging, Hinata finally got the kind of teaching she needed - the kind she’d never had before. And she began progressing much more rapidly in speed, grace, and dexterity than before, her eyes becoming ever better and her shields and cutting techniques becoming ever stronger. Hinata became deadly in under a minute in close combat, eventually combining the two styles, a weird fusion of fast Lightning and deadly Gentle touch that was all her own. “You’re clan heiress,” Yoruichi would tell her, pushing just a little. “Prove it.”

Tenten mastered using each and every single weapon available to a ninja individually, both close and long distance. She created sealing scrolls capable of summoning countless weapons at once in various shapes and barrages. Her blows became sharp and deadly, her aim surefire and every time. It was hard even to land a scratch on Tenten, and she could grab enemy weapons out of the air and use them herself. But one thing Yoruichi emphasized? Weapons strategy. “What do you do if you encounter an opponent who can redirect any attack away from themselves and fights solely long distance, never letting you or a weapon get too close?” Tenten was stumped. “How about attaching explosive tags to the weapons that fall harmlessly around them?” Tenten brightened and Yoruichi smiled. “That’s the sort of thinking I’m going to teach you to accomplish. All weapons are useless until used in the correct way. Your father is a weapons specialist, Tenten. Make him proud.”

And finally, Yoruichi taught them to be people. “Ninja have to be humans as well as weapons, or they’ll go a little bit insane,” she said seriously. “That’s the Konoha reigning mentality. Outside of missions, I want you to flourish as people too. I want you to find hobbies you each enjoy that have nothing to do with being a ninja, and even share them with each other. Make friends with one another. I encourage that.

“Don’t let your focus on being strong become a sole obsession. It’s unhealthy.”

Let free to be people, unfettered from the outside peer judgment that a classroom environment would have provided, each girl became more and more fearlessly and individually herself as the years passed.

Sakura found she loved books, puzzles of all kinds, and writing longer form poetry. She made an effort to increase her skill and enjoyment of that as the years passed.

Ino adored angular charcoal drawing, shopping for punk and avant garde fashions, and horror and sci fi in streaming, movies, and video games. She made an effort to increase her skill and enjoyment of that as the years passed.

Hinata found joy in baking, flower pressing, and activities like pottery, glass blowing, and making jewelry. She made an effort to increase her skill and enjoyment of that as the years passed.

Tenten discovered herself to be a little witch. She loved astrology and fortune telling such as tarot cards, herbal teas and remedies, and she also studied chakra theory in order to put chakra into objects to create items such as scrying crystals (which could be used to see anything in the surrounding area). She made an effort to increase her skill and enjoyment of that as the years passed.

Most notably, they each found joy out of something imaginative, critically thinking, or creative.

They also shared hobbies. They each loved music, listening and sharing with each other, going to concerts together. And, as Ino had promised, they had sleepovers together often and enjoyed “girling out.” They made each other’s nails, played twister, made pillow forts, giggled, covered the chosen girl’s room in balloons and glitter, and ate peanut butter from the jar. They had plenty of late-night four-way emergency phone calls over the ensuing years.

They became good friends, in fact, inevitably since they knew so much about each other and went through so much together. They started out studying and training together first and foremost, each bringing a different skill set to the table. Sakura recommended chakra control tips and academic and intelligence study techniques, as well as tips for how to notice and thus break out of a genjutsu. Tenten improved their weaponry knowledge and aim. Hinata shared her extensive knowledge of how to study and improve in taijutsu, offering to spar with each of them. Ino helped them with chakra building and the Academy ninjutsu.

But as they studied and trained together, and no competition against one another was encouraged, they became very close. When one began flagging, the others would cheer her on. “Come on! You can do this!” They learned never to leave a fellow behind. And when someone wasn’t understanding something academically, the other three would help her.

“Of course we all became friends,” said Ino. “We were lucky. None of us turned out to be gigantic _dicks.”_

They met each other’s parents and often went out downtown, shopping and having fun together. Tenten would charge ahead. “This is so exciting!” she would cheer in a sing-song voice. “We’re just like grown up women!”

“Speak for yourself,” said Ino, with humorous faux indignation. “I _am_ a grown up woman.” She’d huff and the others would laugh. Ino grinned.

“You know, Sakura,” said Hinata, calm and smiling pleasantly as they were walking. “You would look good in this.” She lifted up a shirt for Sakura’s study. “Burgundy velvet.”

“Hey, she’s right!” said Ino, surprised and impressed. Hinata smiled and shrugged, playful and faux humble.

“Do you think so?” said Sakura, puzzled, looking down at herself. “I can never tell with these things…” she murmured.

“Try it, try it!” Tenten chanted, grinning, and then the other two began joining in.

Sakura laughed. “So the verdict is try it?” she said playfully, and all the other girls cheered. “Okay!” She took the shirt with determination. “I’m trying it on!” And they entered the shop for the dressing room.

Then they’d go to some coffee shop somewhere. Tenten liked chocolate, Sakura caramel, Hinata vanilla, and Ino whatever wild new drink was on the menu at the time.

There were fights, of course. Tenten and Ino would go at it over some loud and easy disagreement, Sakura’s ideals would be stepped on or someone would try to help her and she would get defensive and lose her temper, and Hinata did not shout but could be cold and frigid for _ages_ on the rare occasions when others fought with her. But they would always make up in the end and turn out laughing the night away.

They also got comfortable with Soi Fong and Yoruichi, as well as the rest of the Shihouin clan.

Soi Fong was hard to warm up to at first. She ran between hot and cold, and was very snappish. But the more they impressed her, the more she slowly started to warm up to and respect them. She was a harsh mistress, but gave one a chance if they impressed her. She also protected them very fiercely against other, judgmental members of either clan. After the first time she yelled at a Shihouin elder who insulted them, they learned to like her a little more. Soi Fong was in fact much crueler to that man than she was toward them. And when they did openly impress her? That was an intoxicating feeling like no other, as well as a major motivator.

Yoruichi, they found, was teasing, extroverted, playful, and tough, but also very fair, warm, and encouraging. She was a good big sister figure, to Soi Fong as well as to them, and the charismatic mistress of all she surveyed. It was easy to see why Yuushirou was so fond of her.

The girls learned to firmly ignore the nasty Shihouin clan council members, their predictions that the girls would fail slowly falling on deaf ears as time passed. They would pass by the elders coldly in the compound halls, even as the elders shouted after them. “You will never make it, new girls!” they would say. They were ignored. That was a good if forced lesson in self confidence.

Yuushirou, on the other hand, was open and friendly. He chattered to them excitedly, sparred with them often in their off-time, talked about all his latest boyfriends, and was all-around a good friend. They weren’t necessarily surprised that he was gay. “I’m going to have children through medical fertilization.” He rolled his eyes and made a face. “Clan council regulations.”

“Do you not want to have children?” Hinata asked with gentle, polite curiosity, having more tact than the rest of them.

“Oh, I’m fine with having kids. I just don’t like being told what to do,” said Yuushirou, surprised and matter of fact, as though this should be obvious. He sounded just like Yoruichi-sama for a moment, they all realized, sweat-dropping.

Yuushirou was the one who got them talking about boys. He would point at guys in the street and playfully ask the girls to rate them. The girls could by the end giggle with Yuushirou for hours about boys. “I think my brother has corrupted you,” Yoruichi often said dryly, but she let the friendship flourish. Privately, she even thought all this was good for them - being trained by other women, learning early to accept various races and sexualities.

And then finally, there was Soi Fong’s clan. The girls expected to be treated like outsiders here, but they were surprised. Soi Fong’s clan chose to take their heiress statuses almost alarmingly seriously. Whenever they went out, alone or in each other’s company, one of Soi Fong’s clan could be seen following politely and formally a ways back.

This didn’t have much effect until one day when a group of girls tried to pick on and physically bully Sakura. Sakura by that time was a proud and confident fighter in her own right, but she didn’t need to do anything - her bodyguard stepped in and actually sent two of the girls to the hospital. Hinata was once picked on by some older boys - same treatment. She didn’t have to do anything to defend herself, even though she could have.

Slowly, as rumors about this incident spread, all four girls were given more respect from their village. But there was a flip side to this. The first week passed into the second, and then the third. And as the first months passed, this began to seem less like a summer camp and more like their new life. The pressure intensified and what they were asked to do heightened. They all had to find various ways, and various reasons, not to break.

In the first months, when they were just learning beginner’s techniques, this became especially important.


	5. Stronger and Free

In the first year, they were still getting used to professionalism and working out. Soi Fong had to hound them during workout sessions, snapping reminders at them to be more serious and respectful. They were just doing a basic workout for a normal ninja, but as untrained children it was hard for them. Yoruichi always made sure they ate a lot and the right kinds of foods, and for now she kind of had to set their eating schedule for them.

In stealth, they learned the very basics: stepping on wet newspaper and trying not to tear it, following Yoruichi and trying to be silent through training fields with various types of terrain cover, learning various places and ways to hide well. In trap making, they started out with clumsily using ninja equipment and studying and building simple, theoretical models for traps.

They tried close distance throwing weapons at unmoving targets, spent most of that first year trying to detect which poison did what based on characteristics in a lab like setting, and they studied basic tracking and survival techniques such as searching for and covering footprints and learning how to make their own shelter and fire. Then they would be set out in the forests surrounding Konoha, in the middle of nowhere with Yoruichi-sama and Soifong-sama, to practice those things.

They were taught and shown the physical techniques to break out of bindings in their first year, and started out with memorizing basic team formations and maneuvers and working their way through very simple strategy puzzles.

They started out with genjutsu breaking by Yoruichi telling them they were under a genjutsu. They would then have to find the details in their surroundings that told the lie. Once they had, the genjutsu would fall on its own.

In ninjutsu, they started out moulding chakra correctly and doing good, fast hand signs. There wasn’t so much emphasis on actually doing the ninjutsu yet.

And in taijutsu, they started out doing basic katas and moves, then practicing slow, clumsy spars with one another. Here, Yuushirou and Soi Fong’s clan retainers came in very handy, helping the girls spar with someone higher level, the retainers treating them as solemnly as if they were real foes while Yuushirou was bright and encouraging. They did have to ignore the Shihouin clan elders predicting their downfall, and this was hard for them at first.

They also practiced moves on dummies, standing posts, and punching bags, being forced to punch and kick for hours until their hands and knuckles bled and every muscle in their body was sore. They began wrapping their knuckles in gauze and then going again, grazes on their cheeks from spars, their bodies slowly becoming more lithe and muscular, sweating. In addition to all this, they had to balance on narrow poles over creeks, learn leaping techniques over thorny and painful bushes, and memorize the tree and roof jumping technique (mostly by repeatedly falling back down on mattresses meant to catch them).

The training in torture, killing, and rape, the reading of psychology and trauma literature, was very dark and disturbing for them at first. As young children, they didn’t always know how to deal with what they were learning and it could upset them. It made them look at what they were training for in a whole new way, from causing extensive brain damage to cutting someone in half to skewering someone to making somebody’s insides explode, and for a while they couldn’t mercilessly fight Shadow Clones the way they were supposed to - it made them too sick.

They had trouble reconciling all this with the Will of Fire. How was a ninja supposed to find a balance between deadly and moral?

In academics, they started out with beginning lessons and very basic skills such as writing, sketching, and mathematics. Still, they weren’t used to learning at such a high, intense level, and they had to be as good academically as they were physically or they’d test out. All that studying wore at them at first.

Their kunoichi arts lessons could be fun - it was all about finding romantic creativity within a set of clearly defined rules, which was challenging but interesting - while the faux research and conversations with their Sensei themselves were extraordinarily nerve wracking at first. They didn’t start out very talented, not even the previously confident Ino, and that just made their anxiety all the more terrible. They didn’t feel seductive at all; they just felt stupid. Their beginning massages, whispers, playfulness were silly and pathetic, and the safe sex information was just disturbing.

The more extra that was piled on, the more exhausted they became. Sakura had trouble detecting and creating even the most basic of illusions; Ino couldn’t get even a simple Wind ninjutsu to come out right and could barely master basic hostage situation mind control; Hinata struggled with mastering her eyes and two different styles of taijutsu, as she was not a genius like her cousin Neji; Tenten had to juggle not only weapons strategy but every single type of weapon available to a ninja.

Summoning even the tiniest of kittens and cubs exhausted them - and they had to do it over and over again. They had to study both Lightning Fist and wakizashi sword fighting katas - and then came the chakra control exercises.

“I want you all to channel chakra into your feet and walk sideways up this tree to the very top,” said Yoruichi, standing with them in a forested training field. “The feet are supposedly the hardest place to channel chakra, and this tree is a stable surface. You won’t get all the way up the first time, so use a kunai to mark your place and then try to beat your level best.

“There are three chakra control exercises. This is the first one.”

Sakura mastered tree climbing immediately, and she felt a brief flare of triumph. Then Yoruichi said: “If your chakra control is excellent, you probably don’t have much of it. So keep climbing trees until all of your fellows have caught up.”

So Sakura was forced to run up and down the tree over - and over - and over again. She became increasingly exhausted, breathing hard, dirty, sweating, slipping up and down the tree as over the following weeks she became exhausted.

Meanwhile, Ino, Hinata, and Tenten had struggles of their own. They repeatedly ran up the tree, marked their place, fell back down - repeat ad nauseum. Ino finally achieved the top at the end of week two - then had to run back up and down the tree like Sakura. Hinata joined them at the beginning of week three. It was utterly exhausting, especially with all the other work they had to do.

Tenten couldn’t make it up the tree at all, not even at the end of week three. “I’ll never get this!” she spat at last, tears of frustration in her eyes. Her exhausted teammates looked over at her.

“Yes, you can,” said Ino, more tired than usual but immediately rising to support.

“Just keep calm. That’s the most important thing in chakra control,” said Sakura. “Your mind and body both have to be calm and even, because chakra is a mixture of both mind and body.”

“Stop thinking about where your place is,” advised Hinata. “I know I do worse when I start comparing myself. Just look for the top, and run toward it. Don’t think.”

Tenten closed her eyes, trying to calm herself. Her feet glowed blue, her chakra presence strong. Then she opened her eyes, fire within them, and sprinted up the tree - all the way to the top. Complete instinct, not thinking.

“... I did it,” she realized at the top, awed, then grinned when her teammates started cheering.

They didn’t have very long to celebrate. Yoruichi immediately said, “Now on to exercise two,” and they all slumped, groaning. “No complaining!”

Exercise two consisted of walking atop water, while exercise three consisted of leaf bending. The same basic routine happened with the other two exercises, which were only achieved over a series of several months.

The same - but with the added flair of how exhausted the girls were becoming.

Yoruichi mandated personal time, too. Sakura struggled with simple puzzles, foolish-sound poetry, and making it through even lower-level books. Ino’s drawings came out like shit, she couldn’t play video games worth for crap, and her first outfits just looked ridiculous. Tenten had to painstakingly research things like chakra energies, astrology and fortune telling, and herbs. All of Hinata’s beginning creations came out either burnt or awful, her beginning flower pressings smears of glue across the pages.

Their friendship was hot and cold - they had fun times together, but in between coffee shops and shopping, sleepovers and late night phone calls, concerts and music, they also stepped on each other’s toes a lot at first and hurt each other’s feelings.

The girls were near tears. Ino took to temper tantrums, Tenten to frequent bouts of shouting and chaotic performance, Sakura to temperamental defensiveness, Hinata to bouts of her old downtrodden and timid depression. This was awful and they felt useless. The worst part? The entire game was incredibly high stakes and they were intimately aware a whole group of people didn’t think they’d make it.

-

Sakura was sitting with her parents at home one night.

“What would you say… if I told you I didn’t think I could do this?” she admitted, pained.

She expected yelling; she expected confusion. To her surprise, they weren’t angry and they understood exactly what she meant.

“I’d say I’m proud of you for trying,” said her father slowly. “But that’s not the Sakura I know.”

Sakura stared at him in confusion. “You see me as someone… who never gives up?”

“Undoubtedly,” said her father, smiling. 

“Sakura, if you want to settle for second best, I don’t blame you,” said her mother. “No one is going to think you any the worse for it. Just know that’s what you’re doing.

“If you’d rather be the Academy good girl, that’s fine.”

-

Ino had a different conversation with her own family that night in her own dining room.

“You want to give up such a large apprenticeship?” said her mother disbelievingly. 

Ino winced. “I just… I can’t help thinking what the Academy would be like. It would be easier: friends, popularity, gossiping, boys. Not as… difficult.”

“Well,” said her father at last, puzzled, “if climbing the higher mountain isn’t for you, go ahead, Ino. But I expected you to be the kind of person who wants to test her limits and know what she can do.”

-

Hinata never dared bring up the conversation with her father, but he saw her exhaustion anyway.

He called her into his office one evening, and for a while she knelt uncertainly, puzzled. They sat in silence, her father staring off into the distance, looking thoughtful.

“Do you know,” he said, “the pressures of clan heir and family dynamics weren’t easy for me either.”

Hinata looked up in surprise, frowning.

“The path you are walking is difficult,” said her father simply. “But all the worthwhile paths are. You may feel useless right now, Hinata, but you would be much the worse off reverting back I think.” 

-

Tenten had the conversation with her father instead, because she didn’t think her mother would be overly pleased by the topic.

“Have you brought these thoughts up with your instructor?” he asked, frowning, at his desk in the weapons shop.

“No,” Tenten admitted. “I don’t think anybody has.”

“You might want to do that,” he said. “All I can say, Tenten, is that I think you’re letting bad thoughts overtake you. You want to stay the loud, careless girl with the easier life.

“I think that’s the problem with all four of you. You want to be the perfect girls with the easy lives. For true ninja, there is no such thing.”

-

Tenten tentatively brought up the topic with Yoruichi and Soi Fong next training session. “Yoruichi-sama, Soifong-sama… what would you say if we admitted this training is too hard for us? Would you be angry?”

The other girls looked up quickly.

Yoruichi looked reserved. To their surprise, Soi Fong responded first. “You have improved enormously, as people and as ninja,” she snapped. “Is that not enough for you?”

“But I don’t feel like I’ve improved at all!” Ino shouted, and the others looked like they agreed.

“It never feels like that at first, while it’s happening,” said Yoruichi. “But you have. All I can tell you is that right now your work is paying off. I know some of this stuff is dark - but don’t be afraid of darkness. At the risk of sounding poetic, darkness reminds us where light can be. That’s what ninja do - we create light out of darkness, good results out of bad situations. You are human, and it’s okay sometimes to be not okay, but just remember that.

“Let’s take a lunch break,” she said suddenly. “Talk about that alone amongst yourselves.”

They sat on the porch overlooking the center garden, munching slowly. “I guess she’s right in a way,” Sakura admitted. “We’re mastering chakra control, and moving on to more complex areas.”

“Maybe it just feels like we’re not improving because every time we’ve mastered something, she springs something new on us,” said Hinata thoughtfully. “My father said I would be the worse off if I quit, not the better,” she added. “That the worthwhile paths are always the hardest.”

“That sounds like bullshit,” Ino scoffed.

“The thought had crossed my mind,” Hinata admitted.

“I’m not so sure, though,” said Tenten thoughtfully. “My Dad thought our real problem is that we want to be the perfect girls with the easy lives.”

“My Mom said something like that too!” Sakura realized. “She asked me if I wanted to settle for being the Academy good girl.”

“... Maybe I have a little of that,” Ino admitted. “I could be a bratty, popular little shit at the Academy… or I could stay here. Do you know what my Dad said? He said he’d expected me to see if I could climb the mountain - to see what I could really do.

“Maybe we’ve been approaching this all wrong,” Ino realized. “We want to be the perfect Academy good girls… but instead of looking at how hard this is, we could see it as an opportunity.”

“We have to see what we can do,” said Hinata quietly. “We have to break free of the stereotypes.”

Yoruichi, hidden behind a nearby wall, smiled. The attitude changed after that, into one of determination - quitting was never spoken of again.

-

It came slowly. They forced themselves up every morning, forced their way through it every day, forced themselves to understand instead of judge their fellow ninja. And every day, they got a little bit stronger.

It was painful at first - like growing pains - an improvement process. They had to put on a good face many a day at first. But all of a sudden, months had gone by, and they realized no tears of frustration had happened in a long time.

They no longer gave those negative thoughts any room to breathe, didn’t give them a single second. They ignored the Shihouin clan elders now with a kind of fierceness. They were busy getting stronger. They were done spinning their wheels, done letting their hearts be dragged around through the dirt by others or by difficulty.

They knew they would never be the same after this. Sakura became less angry and defensive and overly idealistic, instead turning calmer and less black and white - also more fun and openly happy, with a good heart. Ino became less spoiled and bratty, more feisty and humorous and wild. Hinata overcame depression and timidity and formed more calm, quiet resolve and sweet smiles. Tenten became more peaceful and warm and teasing, less loud and haphazard.

They knew they would never be the same. Those perfect Academy girl images of a different life had faded into the distance and disappeared. They had passed the point of being able to turn back and be those same old girls again. They were okay with that.

Because there were benefits, they realized, to leaving those old lives and people behind, to becoming new people. They finally let go, stopped holding back on the people they could truly become. They found serenity in the storm, calm in the wild abandon of hobbies and friends, fights and training. They learned to fight without being a psychopath about it, and learned more about each other.

With some distance, those old lives and problems began to seem tinier. The weaknesses that had once controlled them were gone. They began to test their limits, to see what they could do - seeing training and fighting as a fun challenge instead of a horrible chore. And they were much better off for it. They became true, strong, respectful ninja at last. No more tears. As their first year drew to a close, as recitals, faux missions, and their first tests with Hokage-sama loomed… they had become new people. Stronger ninja, but also stronger people. They had become happy.

They were unbending, firm, smiling. Free.


End file.
